Advertising Representations of Older People in the United Kingdom and Taiwan

Abstract

Cross-cultural studies of advertising representations of older people are relatively scarce. This article aims to fill in this gap via a comparison between Taiwan and the United Kingdom, employing a combination of quantitative content analysis and the qualitative grounded theory method. The content-analysis phase reveals underrepresentation of older people in both countries' advertising contexts, as well as representational differences between Taiwan and the United Kingdom in terms of older characters' role salience, the products, physical settings, and social networks they are associated with. The grounded-theory phase yields nine prototypes of older people along with subcategories to conceptualize the qualities of older people as they appear in TV ads in these countries. The findings are discussed in relation to the stereotyping of older people and transformed into hypothetical statements to be modified in future research. In conclusion, the Confucian tradition of filial piety is still found to be important in explaining the observed cross-cultural differences, but the emergence of new norms about aging in Taiwanese advertising also suggests that this tradition may be in decline.

Age-Telling in Intergenerational First-encounter Talks between College Students and Older Adults in Taiwan: A Gerontological Sociolinguistic Study

“…Moreover, Taiwan's proportion of older people is expected to rise further in the coming years, given increases in its population's longevity and recent sharp decreases in its birthrate. Nevertheless, language and communication studies which focused on ageing, older age or older people are still relatively rare in Taiwan, with important exceptions related to health/medical communication (Tsai, 2003(Tsai, , 2005(Tsai, , 2007(Tsai, , 2010(Tsai, , 2017(Tsai, , 2018, teacher-older-student communication (Chen, 2015a;Chen, 2019), in media communication (Chen, 2015b;Chen, 2015c;Chen, 2016), intergenerational first-encounter talks (Chen, 2017) and the discourse features of senior Alzheimer's patients (Lai, 2014, Lai & Lin, 2012. Uniquely, the current study examines casual talks between younger and older adults at their first encounters, with an interest on the cultural conceptualisation of older age and the discursive management of age-telling by older people.…”

Age-friendly Advertising: A Qualitative Research on the Romanian Silver Consumers

“…While the quantitative approach on ageing in advertising tracks the media representations and stereotypes, the qualitative framework (Chen, 2015;Marshall & Rahman, 2015;Flatt et al, 2013;Brooks, 2010;Calasanti, 2007;Calasanti & King, 2007;Coupland, 2010) is more focused on how seniors perceive and interpret the meaning of advertising messages as well as how cultural ideas about modifying or controlling ageing spread through advertising claims or how advertising shapes the social attitudes toward successful ageing. The anti-ageing ads are using stereotyped images and claims of old age as tools to promote products that promise the empowerment (Calasanti, 2007).…”

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