International advertising in Western Europe: should differences in uncertainty avoidance be considered when advertising in Belgium, France, The Netherlands and Spain?

There is an ongoing debate as to whether cultural differences necessitate adaptation of advertisements to local circumstances in international business communication. In particular, value appeals are thought to be culturally sensitive because cultures differ with respect to which values are considered important, and it is thought that appealing to important values is more, persuasive than appealing to ones less impel rant. This article reports on an experiment in which the persuasiveness of an appeal to security was compared to that of an appeal to adventure. The relative persuasiveness of these appeals was studied in countries (i.e., Belgium, France and Spain) that are characterized as high uncertainty avoidance cultures, and a country characterized as a low uncertainty avoidance culture: The Netherlands, Results showed that the two value appeals proved equally persuasive for all countries.

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Smeltzer (1993) suggests that the topic of international business communication is one of six requiring research emphasis. This call for attention has led to several articles and a special issue on international business communication (e.g.. Ulijn, 2000), Varner (2000) has developed a model for the interrelationship between business strategy, intercultural strategy, and communication strategy. Her models posits that the topic of business communication requires an independent research agenda about intercultural interaction, Indeed, research has paid little attention to the quality of persuasive documents used in international business communication. Most investigations have been conducted to detect differences in organization, tone, formality or rhetorical choices in business letters from various countries (see Alred, 1997; Bell, Dillon, & Becker, 1995; Haneda & Shima, 1982; Varner, 1988). Characteristic of these letters is that they are sent from one person to another person.

A notable exception is Graves (1997), who described the influence of culture on direct mail letters written by American and Canadian writers. Letters were sent to a large audience whose members were unknown to the sender, Graves then analyzed the rhetorical choices made by letter authors. Shelby (1998) defines rhetorical choice as the "preference for the 'most appropriate' option for a given situation" (p. 338), According to Shelby, the designer should take audience preferences into account to produce high quality documents. As Graves notes, these preferences may be culturally influenced. What is appropriate in one culture may be inappropriate in another. For instance, Boomer and Varner (2001) analyzed differences in the design of a direct marl letter from American Express that was sent to potential customers in the United States and to potential customers in Mexico. The researchers discussed the choices made in terms of the cultural differences that exist between the two countries.

We address the issue concerning the extent to which cultural differences require different rhetorical choices in the design of advertisements. As is the case for writers of direct mail, designers of advertisements do not know members of the intended audience. When designing advertisements, internationally operating companies must decide whether to standardize their marketing operations or to adapt them to local circumstances. Advertising standardization implies using the same visual and verbal message (except for the language). Whether such a standardized approach is in a company's best interest or if a company should develop different advertisements for each country separately has given rise to a lively debate. We briefly touch upon the debate in the next section. Afterward, we review the relevant empirical evidence on the matter. We find that several content analysis studies have been conducted on differences in the design of advertisements in Western Europe. However, we find that no such experimental research has been conducted on the issue of adaptation. The present study was conducted to fill this apparent gap.

The Standardization--Adaptation Debate

White (2000) reviewed the arguments in favor of standardizing marketing communications, and found that financial concerns seem to play an important role. Developing different advertising campaigns for each country is more expensive than it is to first develop one advertising campaign and having it translated to the languages of other countries. A second popular argument is that by using a standardized campaign, it is possible to create a similar brand image in each of the countries in which the company is active. Another Swiss watch manufacturer actually refers to this argument on its website: "What is important for Rado is the idea of global advertising, which helps to guarantee a worldwide brand image--from Hong Kong to New York, from Oslo to Cape town" (http://www.rado.com/communication/). The claim that companies can benefit from standardization has not gone unchallenged. De Mooij (1998), in particular, has argued forcefully that the benefits of standardization do not outweigh the costs. She claims that if advertisements are to be successful they must be adapted to cultural differences. Following Hofstede (1984), De Mooij states that differences in values lie at the core of cultural differences. Cultures differ with respect to which values are regarded as important. For instance, status may be considered more important than safety in some cultures, but this preference may be reversed in other cultures.

Using value differences has become an effective way to describe cultural dissimilarities. Smith and Schwartz (1997) review this line of research and conclude that countries differ with regard te value priorities consistently, and that these differences in priorities show meaningful and consistent relations to other societal attributes. Differences in value priorities are usually described at the group level. However, these differences also influence individuals of a given culture. As a result of socialization processes, the cultural preference for important values can be largely internalized by individuals in the culture. That is, most people living in a culture that places greater value on status than on safety should consider the former more important.

Using dissimilarities in value hierarchies is certainly not the only way which cultural differences can be described (for a review of other approaches, see Fiske, Kitayama, Markus & Nisbett, 1998). Depending on the kind of process or behavior that is to be explained, a different approach may be more suitable. Janosik (1987), for instance, argues that to fully understand the influence of culture on negotiation processes, one must take into account individual differences and the social context. It is indeed hard to imagine that one can explain the process and outcome of a negotiation process in which participants with different cultural backgrounds interact by simply referring to differences in value hierarchies. When studying the response of a person to an advertisement, such an approach is more promising given the role played by values. Yet, we also agree with Janosik that knowledge about individual differences among individuals is needed.

The reason that values are important in persuasive communication is that they influence the evaluation and decision processes (Feather, 1990, 1995). For instance, when people carefully evaluate, the benefits of a product, values play a critical role in assessing the product's attributes, Indeed, differences in value hierarchies may have far-reaching consequences for such evaluation processes. Consider a consumer who wants to buy a car and who has narrowed down the choice to two, equally expensive brands. One brand is known for safety, the other for status. To a consumer who values safety over status, the former car is more attractive, whereas the latter will be more attractive to a consumer who values status more than safety, Research tends to show that value hierarchies play an important role in consumer derision processes (De Mooij, 2000, 2001; Vinson, Scott & Lamont, 1977).

Given the importance of values in the consumer decision process and given that cultures differ with respect to which values are considered important. De Mooij (1998) claims that standardized advertising is probably ineffective. Effective advertising, therefore, accounts for differences in the relative importance of values. Stressing a car's safety when trying to persuade members of a culture in which safety is considered relatively unimportant will not likely be effective. De Mooij's advice to adapt advertising campaigns to local value hierarchies appears to be accepted by many international companies, as evidenced by Jones (2000, p. 5), who reports that in the 1980s the proportion of fully standardized campaigns fell from 70% to 10%.

Understanding standardization or adaptation of advertising is not restricted to opinions and consumer behavior data only. Researchers have taken on the task of learning more about the extent to which advertising reflects cultural differences and whether adaptation yields more persuasive messages. The results of this scholarship are discussed in the next section.

Empirical Research Evidence