Culture’s role in international Brand’s advertisement

Abstract In a global economy, more and more companies start developing their activities beyond borders. The success of these companies and brands in such a global market is influenced by many factors. One of the most important factors is their audiences' culture. The influence of cultural factors on business flow is important. Every society has its own cultural elements and considerations what has appeared in language, religion, values and attitudes, customs, etc. International companies which are going to have international audiences for their products and services need to interact with different cultures. Target audiences of international brand's advertising differ from country to country in terms of how they approach to advertisements, understand them or decode symbols and respond to their contents. Cross cultural communication solutions try to help minimize the negative impact of cross cultural differences on cross cultural advertising. Regarding the undeniable effects of cultural factors on the success of brands' advertising in different countries of the world, the necessity of study the role of culture and its application in the international trading advertisements is felt. In today's world, the advertising would be effective that can adapt to the cultural requirements. To recognition the culture of a country, affecting factors on social behavior should be studied. The same behavior also could be effective on advertising styles. Recognition the capacity of a culture, intercultural communication, as well as the overall advertising practices in each country, can help the popularity of the brand in the public acceptance. Therefore, advertising campaign of IKEA brand is evaluated as a research sample in two countries of America and China. This is a case study. The images have been selected from 2000 to 2015 campaigns that have been run and presented in several different countries. The samples have been collected according to international sites such as Ads of the World and Coloribus and available promotions archive, and were reviewed, described and analyzed through careful observation of the researcher. To analyze the samples, the researcher using the culture factor of high and low background of Hall and the three factors of masculinity/femininity, collectivism/individualism and indulgence/limitations has reviewed the commercial advertisements of Ikea in America and China. The criteria of choosing this brand were having a good global market and its attention to cultural factors to advance its advertising goals. Six advertising campaigns of IKEA in these two countries were studied according to cultural theories of Hofstede and Hall. Consider to the factors such as overall formation of an ad based on consideration to cultural factors and how to address it have been studied in this research. The findings indicate that IKEA brand has adapted its advertisements to the cultural features of the target country to a large extent. However, the adaptation of IKEA advertisements with low cultural context is more seen in the west countries and advertising message is obviously understandable in it. The reason is that the brand knows that mother culture more than eastern cultures.