1. Topic

The report is about the difficulties based on cultural differences marketers and advertising agents have to deal with when setting up an advertising campaign.

2. Introduction

The research report will try to show what are the main problems marketers are confronted with when they set up an advertising campaign for the world markets. It is not the goal of the essay to find new approaches to avoid expensive mistakes connected with the wrong advertising campaign. It rather should show with examples where global companies have made mistakes in the past, what the consequences were and should show what companies do and did to avoid such embarrassing mistakes and maybe where the changes in avoiding those mistakes are.

The methods chosen by the companies or advertising agencies to avoid marketing mistakes should be found out by a questionnaire, which will be sent to the biggest advertising agencies in New Zealand via email. It is expected that they all use similar approaches when shaping and converting campaigns for the target markets.

The topic of the report has been an increasing factor when designing international marketing strategies in recent years and will become more important in the next millennium. The reasons are a world, which moves up tighter together depending on the fast development of new technologies, which allows us to communicate with nearly every part of the world everytime. To avoid irritations based on cultural differences we have to know the cross-cultural differences.

Another not less important factor is the many mergers in the last years, which lead to an increasing number of global players, which enter the global markets with their marketing strategies. To create the right mix they have to spend time on studying the differences in consumer behaviour based on cultural differences before creating a marketing strategy.

3. Problem Statement

Where are the limits of setting up an advertising campaign concerning the different consumer behaviour based on cultural differences?

- How do marketers shape and convert existing advertising campaigns for target markets.

- What do they do to avoid marketing mistakes caused by brand names, which might be misunderstood?

- Which parts of culture affect the work of marketers mainly?

- Where do markets exist where one advertising campaign and the same brand name do not cause a problem because of a similar consumer behaviour?

- Which are the markets where the marketers have to change their campaigns at the most because of the large differences in culture to other markets?

4. Literature Review

Many theories exist which deal with the topic. And also much research has been done to prove these theories. But only few authors have been able to develop strategies or solutions, which use the acknowledgements granted by the research. The reason might be that the universal strategy that fits for all problems caused by cultural differences does not exist.

To find out something about the limits of cross-cultural advertising it is necessary to know how marketing and culture are linked and what belongs to culture.

In the research report culture should include language, as a key to its culture, non-verbal communication, religion, time, space colour, numbers and food preferences.

All these elements are included in an advertising campaign and can cause expensive mistakes when marketers do not consider the differences when creating for example an commercial.

Another very important fact, which has to be considered, is that high- and low-context cultures exist. Many authors have written about this topic. One of the firsts who mentioned this in connection with global marketing was Wells (1987, cited in Martenson 1989). He presumed that high- and low-context cultures exist and that this should be considered when setting up an advertising campaign. His assumption was confirmed by a research by Rita Martenson (1989). She tested 239 people who belonged to five cultural groups with different grades of context-levels. The outcome supported clearly Wells' proposition that high-context cultures get more information from non-verbal communication instruments than people, which belong to a low context culture.

Another assumption which was being tested was the one from Jacobs and Campbell (1961, cited in Martenson 1983). The assumption was that a person belongs up to four or five generations to his culture of origin when he moved into another one, before he adapted the new culture completely. The research found out that a connection exists but that it lasts approximately three generations until the new culture is completely adapted. This outcome is especially for the research report very interesting, because it will try to find out (with the questionnaire, which will be sent to New Zealand biggest advertising agencies) if and how the advertising agencies consider this circumstance when they create an advertising campaign for New Zealand. Many people from the pacific islands live in New Zealand. They belong to a high-context culture and many people with European background who belong to low-context cultures.

Beside this connection between advertising and culture exist other theories. All marketers know that they have to satisfy the needs and wants of the consumers and that the needs and wants are culturally based.

But there are many different opinions in which way an advertising campaign for the global markets should be designed. The published articles, theories and research studies led to a "standardisation versus adaptation" debate. As long as the world exist people wanted to get the most for the least effort. In global advertising that means to enter the...
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Cross-Cultural Communication. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 12 Oct, 2010 from