Globalization And Homogenization Of Culture

Past published research have shown advertising subjects that are dependable with the cultural values of an intended audience are more desirable than ads that reflect inconsistent values (Belk, Bryce and Pollay 1985; Muson and McIntyre, 1978). People differ in the extent to which they prefer one specific value over another. One individual may prefer adventure over harmony, whereas another may prefer harmony over adventure. Not only do individuals vary in their value priorities, but cultures also have been shown to differ in their value hierarchies, that is, their rankings of which values are relatively important and unimportant (Hofstede, 1980). In United States, for instance, individualist values (e.g., independence) are relatively important, …show more content…
In Levitt’s view, globalization is transforming the world into a one culture market place where all customers can be persuaded by the same advertising appeals and values, irrespective of the culture they originally belong to. If Levitt’s argument is valid, such a homogenization of culture would have a number of important advantages in the marketing aspect. There would also be significant cost savings in producing advertising, as local market testing and localized advertising design would no longer needed (Dmoch, 1999 in Diehl et. al, 2003; Levitt, 1983). There is a popular argument that is the adaptation of advertising to suit the local cultural values, irrespective of the globalized one culture. In this approach marketers reach consumers in different markets by using a culturally fitting advertising message (Kotler, …show more content…
“Does integration of local cultural values in advertising of high involvement services result in high effectiveness of advertisements, in the Sri Lankan context?”
Here the researcher will investigate into the impact of local cultural values on the effectiveness of advertising appeals through creating favourable attitude towards the advertisement of high involvement services specially banks, insurance, hotels and telecommunications. And as the channel of communication, print advertising had been selected. As the dependent variable, effectiveness of advertisements had been identified and independent variables will be advertising appeals with local cultural values and advertising appeals with non-local cultural appeals. The problem had been operationalized by considering the cultural values stated in the value dimensions of Hofstede (1980) and corresponding advertising appeals developed by Pollay (1983). Which is discussed extensively in Chapter