Standardization, compromise, or specialization: a content analysis of magazine advertisements in America and Taiwan

When researchers studied standardization and specialization of advertising, most of them only focused on comparisons of the cultural influences of the advertisements across the different nations. McCarty (1994) studied the general role in cross-cultural research and international marketing and advertising of several different cultural values, such as individualism versus collectivism: masculinity versus femininity; time orientation, activity orientation and humans’ relationship with nature. Kahle, Beatty and Mager (1994) studied implications of social values for European community communications. Astroff (1994) (1994) studied the language culture use of women in advertising. Huang (1995) studied the different cultural factors, such as norms and ethics, between American and Taiwan’s television commercials. Caillat and Muller studied the cultural influences on American and British beer advertising in 1996. Cheng and Schweitzer (1996) computed cultural values, such as tradition versus modernity, reflected in American and British beer advertising. Although many of the international studies were carried out comparing the differences among cultures it will be of more practical value to study advertising messages because the results might be able to provide guidelines for the international marketers and international advertisers to sell their products across countries. Researchers, such as Ramaprased and Hasegawa (1992 & 1992), who have been focusing on international advertising from the standpoint of creative development rather than cultural influence view advertising standardization, compromise, specialization as creative strategies. Douglas and Dubois (1977) studied how the cultural environment impacts market and advertising strategies across countries. In 1981, Kaynak and Mitchell analyzed marketing and advertising strategies used in Turkey, Britain and Canada. Kanso (1992) studied the significant differences of the cultures in international advertising. Killough (1978) researched the transfer of international advertising. Colvin, Heeler and Thorpe (1980) researched advertising strategies in three European countries: United Kingdom, France and Sweden. Dowling (1980) studied American and Australian use of informational cues in different product categories on television. Hornik (1980) compared the evaluations of international and national advertising strategies. In 1988, Hite and Fraser studied international advertising strategies of multinational corporations. Keown, Jacobs, Schmidt and Ghymn (1992) studied different information cues used in America, Japanese, South Korean and Chinese television, radio, magazine, and newspaper advertisements. Duncan and Ramaprasad (1995) studied international advertising strategy, execution, and language differences. This study is designed to separate one aspect from other various influences in advertising and to focus on advertising creative strategies in international markets by following these researchers’ guidelines