Advertising Appeals of Globalized Companies : Cross Cultural Lessons from India and US OTC Drugs Industry

Advertisements are first point of contact a marketer has with the prospective consumer. It is at this stage that marketer has an opportunity to differentiate a reader from a prospective customer. This is done with help of appeals/ appeals like models, information about the products etc. However, a marketer is always plagued by the problem of what appeals to use and what part of the advertisement to localize and what to standardize. One school of thought propagated by Albers- Muller states that advertising appeals reflect and are influenced by cultural values. This influence of culture could lend a certain degree of predictability to the advertising task. The current study is framed in this background. The study aims to study advertising appeals across two cultures and association between the two. To facilitate the cross country comparison different industries were analyzed. It was found that in most mature industries, due to globalization, the norms across countries have been strictly set and the comparison lead to similar results. As a result filter for the choice of industry was kept as the Industry Life Cycle Stage i.e. Emerging/Growing industry. The criteria led to selection of advertisements of Over the Counter (OTC) drugs industry. On basis of Hofsted index it was decided to choose two countries which belonged to different clusters of Hofsted but had English as a main language. Therefore, India and USA were chosen. Data was collected using Pollay’s construct of 42 appeals. Data was analysed using factor analysis, proportions and chi square test. Results for factor analysis indicated 9 appeals. Proportional measure were calculated, across these appeals, for both the countries. Results highlighted that total numbers of appeals in Indian advertisements were 336 and in US advertisements were 331. Results highlighted that proportional presence of appeals varied across both cultures. Wisdom appeals, status, adventurous appeals were more popular in USA and were traded off in India for Emotional and excitement appeals. Standardization was found to exist for two appeals i.e. attractiveness and performance. The results of chi square test highlighted that wisdom and emotional appeals were associated with uncertainty avoidance index and masculinity index. Culture did not influence the remaining appeals. The current study contributes to existing base of knowledge for understanding the puzzle of "Glocalization" in communication