Cultural Values and Advertising Appeals in International Advertising - A Comparison of Finland and Vietnam Advertising

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the cultural values reflecting on advertising appeals in the print advertisements with the comparison between two countries: Finland and Vietnam. The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship of cultural values and advertising appeals along with the role of product category in selecting advertising appeals. By this way, it explores the similarities and differences of cultural characteristics between Finland and Vietnam. The primary theory of this thesis is based on Pollay’s concept of values applying to Hofstede’s cultural framework, which has been a theoretical premise of previous studies. A sample of 36 Vietnamese print ads and 36 Finnish print ads from eight product categories is collected and analysed in terms of advertising appeals that appear in the advertisements. The results show value paradox on both Finnish and Vietnamese cases, especially Finnish results provide value paradox on four cultural dimensions: masculinity – femininity, power distance, and long – short-term orientation. Vietnam, on the other hand, only has one value paradox phenomenon on uncertainty avoidance dimension. Therefore, it implies that there is a possibility for further comparative research on value paradox to investigate the relationship between the culture and its advertising contents in a society, or perhaps across cultures.