The influence of cultural differences on the effectiveness of advertising appeals in social media ads in case of gen Z from Czechia, Finland and Turkey

Abstract

The cultural differences have always been an important aspect of international advertising and the cultural values stemming from these differences have been found to be reflected in the centre-point of an advertisement – the advertising appeals. While there already have been number of studies examining the effectiveness of advertising appeals in cross-cultural setting in various contexts, the literature review of this work has revealed, that this topic has been yet not examined from the perspective of social media and generation Z. This is crucial, as the appeal´s effectiveness can be significantly moderated by the generational differences and media type. Moreover, as the recent development in this line of research has shown, the role of these differences might be continuously decreasing due to the progressing globalization and associated possibility of the cultural convergence. For this reason, the examination of social media and gen Z is important not only due to the growing importance of both of these aspects for advertising practitioners, but also due to their link with the topic of cultural convergence. The study has been further delimitated to three countries, Czechia, Finland and Turkey, based on the author´s data accessibility in these countries. To answer the main research question, which is defined as: “What is the influence of the differences in cultural values on the effectiveness of advertising appeals in social media ads in case of generation Z members from Czechia, Finland and Turkey”, the thesis has based its theoretical framework on the concept Hofstede´s cultural dimensions and Pollay´s list of 42 appeals. The research itself was carried out as a quantitative study, with the data being collected through internet self-completed questionnaire and final sample size of 93 participants. The effectiveness was measured with the concepts of attitude toward the advertisement and purchase intention and the study examined four appeals (status, cheap, convenient and natural). The results of the empirical study have in majority of the cases shown, that there are no significant differences in effectiveness of the examined appeals between the three groups, suggesting relative homogeneity of response of gen Z consumers to advertising appeals on social media. However, not all the examined appeals have been found to be equally effective. Moreover, the data indicated, that while the response to the appeals might be similar across countries, there are still differences in purchasing behaviour and the preference of ad personalization. The outcomes therefore suggest, that in case of gen Z and social media, the advertising practitioners could effectively utilize the standardized international advertising strategy instead of the adaptation strategy. However, they still have to consider some of the cultural differences, which might have influence on the advertisement´s success and necessary investments.