The means‐end cognitions of web advertising: a cross‐cultural comparison

Purpose – The paper, based on the concepts of means‐end chain (MEC) theory and high versus low‐context cultures, aims to understand whether the differentiation of culture connotations is directly reflected in the design of web advertisements and whether the text content of web ads is a reliable indicator of different context cultures (e.g. implicit and explicit). Design/methodology/approach – Changing consumer attitudes toward the use of credit provides huge business opportunities for credit card issuers. Obviously, credit card issuers have continued their efforts to persuade large numbers of people to obtain and use the cards. Credit cards can thus be considered a successful intercultural marketing case of product internationalisation. Therefore, this paper used web ads for credit cards as research subjects. This paper adopts MEC theory and the distinction between high‐ and low‐context cultures to identify whether the cultural context directly affects the design and content of web advertisements. Findings – Through examining the advertising copy of credit card web sites, this study found that the higher the cultural context, the more complicated the cognitive attribute‐consequence‐value structures of web ad design. Thus, web design analysis reveals that marketers living in countries with high‐context cultures normally communicate indirectly with their target audience, leading to highly complex attribute‐consequence‐value linkage structures with many layers. Originality/value – This is the first study to integrate the concepts of MEC theory and high versus low‐context cultures for understanding the impact of culture on web advertising. By understanding the differentiation of web ad designs across various cultures it is possible to provide marketers with valuable insights for developing advertising strategies in global markets.