Examination of the effect of culture in advertising: The presence of Hofstede’s culture dimensions in Swedish advertisements

Abstract

Cross-Cultural research has been a widely discussed topic among scholars. As the world gets smaller in the sense of globalization, many companies face challenges in the marketing strategy in foreign cultures. Geert Hofstede presented in 1980 a cultural framework, which have later been further developed by the Dutch researcher. This framework consists of six cultural dimensions. This study aimed to find an answer to the question: “Are Hofstede’s culture dimensions present in advertising from Sweden?”. The objectives of the study were out if the cultural values from Hofstede´s framework are present in advertisement. How consistent are the value presented in the advertisements with the cultural framework. The study also aimed to find an an swer on whether culture is affecting advertisement, and how important the understanding of culture is for marketing firms.

Mono-method was implanted in the quantitative study. The study was conducted by using two analyzing surveys created in excel, where 200 printed advertisements from Swedish magazines were analyzed for cultural values. The first survey was focusing on determining human portrayals, the second survey analyzed how present Hofstede´s cultural values were. The answers were later analyzed by using descriptive analysis method.

The results of the study showed that Hofstede´s cultural frame was working as a tool of measuring cultural values in advertisement. It also showed that most of the Swedish advertisement presented the same values. The human portrayals appearing in most advertisement were dependent, decorative and attractive features mostly characterized by female figures. Moreover, the advertisement had very strongly individual, masculine, high power, long-term orientation, and indulgence values presented. However, an interesting finding from the study was that some values that had scored high scores in the strongly present answer were in contrast with the scores of Sweden´s cultural frame from Hofstede´s framework. The advertisements had strong masculine values, whereas Sweden is very feminine country. The same regarding the power distance, where advertisements had this value strongly presented which is the opposite of the country score. Which means that the cultural values in advertisements are not consistent with the cultural framework.