How Global are Global Brands? An Empirical Brand Awareness and Image Analysis

Abstract

does not extend to any other kind of copying by any means, in any form, and for any purpose other than private research use. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any statements of fact or opinion expressed in the published papers. The appearance of advertising in this journal does not constitute an endorsement or approval by the publisher, the editor-in-chief, or the editorial board of the quality or value of the product/service advertised or of the claims made for it by its manufacturer. Permissions EDITORIALIn this new volume, I am very pleased to present to you a total of seven manuscripts on different aspects of European marketing from a cross-national and cross-cultural perspectives. A wide variety of papers are presented by authors of European origin as well as those from outside of Europe who have a keen interest in European marketing issues. There is one unifying theme ingrained in all of the articles-that is increasing importance of Europe in a globalizing world. Some authors term this as a Europe factor. All of the predictions for the future is that new Europe will gain increased prominence through inter and intra trade in major industries.Although humor is extensively used as an advertising device in many countries, the question of whether humor is evaluated differently across cultures has not been answered appropriately yet. While some authors argue that humor is a "cultural universal", others suggest that humor has universal (e.g., sense of humor) as well as cultural-specific (e.g., expression and perception of different humor types) characteristics. Yet, the discussion lacks empirical evidence.To date, the effectiveness of humor has not been analyzed in a cross-cultural setting. To fill this void, Muller et al integrate the type of humor in the well-established attitude toward the ad-model of humor. The authors propose that the core model (perceived level of humor  attitude toward the ad  attitude toward the brand) is culturally invariant while the extended part of the model (type of humor  perceived level of humor) is assumed to be culturally variant.To test their research questions, the authors conducted an experiment with three fictitious print ads (aggressive humor, nonsense humor, no humor). 257 Russian and German respondents are surveyed. They choose Russia and Germany to test the suggested model as these two countries differ significantly with respect to the two GLOBE-dimensions perfor-mance orientation and in-group collectivism, which are assumed to interact with type of humor on perceived level of humor.The study results show that culture (in-group collectivism, performance orientation) moderates the relation between humor type (aggressive, nonsense) and perceived level of humor while the influence of perceived level of humor on attitudes toward the ad and the brand is culturally stable.The research by Dabic et al. examines the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) in emerging European economies and poses a new call for research. Although the question of FDI effects has rec...