Adapting Consumer Advertising Appeals to Cultural Values A Meta-Analytic Review of Effects on Persuasiveness and Ad Liking

Abstract

It is a truism that successful persuasive messages should be adapted to audi ence values. A substantial research literature-not previously systematically reviewed-has examined whether advertisements with appeals adapted to the audience's important cultural values (e.g., individualism for North Americans) are more persuasive and better liked than appeals that are unadapted to such values. A meta-analytic review of that research finds that adapted ads are only slightly more persuasive (mean r = .073, 67 cases) and slightly better liked (mean r = .082, 66 cases) than unadapted ads. Moreover, these effects were mainly limited to North Americans and Asians and to values related to individualism-collectivism. In this chapter, we discuss explanations for these results and identify directions for future research.

The Influence of High-/Low-Context Culture on Perceived Ad Complexity and Liking

“…It is understood that advertising messages targeted at audiences from different parts of the world do not always travel, which increases the need for adapting messages across the globe instead of standardizing them (e.g., Agrawal, 1995;Hornikx & O'Keefe, 2009;La Ferle, Edwards, & Lee, 2008). It seems straightforward that, when communicating with their target audience in different cultures, companies want to clearly mention the benefits of their products in order to maximize their impact (see Wyer & Shrum, 2015).…”

The Effects of Cultural Adaptation in Fundraising Letters: The Case of Help-Self and Help-Others Appeals in a Feminine Culture

“…The significant effects found for attitude towards the letter and credibility of the organization, however, were rather large: r ϭ .17 for credibility of the organization, and r ϭ .28 for attitude towards the letter. These effect sizes are larger than the average effect size found in the meta-analysis of Hornikx and O'Keefe (2009) that summarizes empirical investigations on cultural value adaptation in advertisements.…”

“…As the interaction between world-view and appeal on persuasiveness was not significant, the adaptation effect cannot be empirically attributed to world-view (i. e., the difference in persuasiveness between the help-others and the help-self appeal was not stronger for participants with a strong care-orientation than for participants with a weaker care-orientation). It should be noted that a lack of a direct empirical explanation such as in the present study has been reported frequently in studies on cultural adaptation of value appeals (see Hornikx and O'Keefe, 2009). To what extent can the cultural adaptation effect found in the present study be explained by culture?…”

“…Although this finding supports the general notion of audience adaptation (cf. Chang, 2002;Wan, 2008;Hornikx and O'Keefe, 2009), it should be noted that differences between the culturally adapted and culturally unadapted appeals were not significant for two important outcomes, namely the attitude towards donation, and donation intention. That is, men and women responded more favourably to the culturally adapted appeal, but only on two dependent variables that are, arguably, less directly related to donating than the other two variables.…”

“…There is some empirical work on the effects of adapting value appeals to masculinity-femininity. In their meta-analytic review of cultural adaptation of value appeals in advertising, Hornikx and O'Keefe (2009) identified 13 (persuasion outcomes) or 14 (ad liking outcomes) comparisons of values appeals that were adapted or unadapted to masculinity-femininity. Adaptation effects were found for ad liking but not for persuasion.…”