As a media genre, advertising is viewed as a distorted mirror which reflects the complexity of culture, advertising therefore offers a unique opportunity to study the different context across cultures. This article generally looks at how advertising reflects culture by contrasting the expression of one core dimension of cultural values, individualism/collectivism, in print advertisements from two diverse societies: United States and Taiwan. This research analyzes the content of 591 American and Taiwanese print advertisements appearing from 2003 to 2004. Firstly, this article seeks to examine how Western advertising in Taiwan is. The results of this investigation reveal that 55.2 percent of the advertisements employed Western language (mainly English) and 45.5 percent of the advertisements utilized Caucasian models. With the appearance of English words and Western models in Taiwanese advertising, we might presume that Taiwanese commercial messages are indeed becoming more Western. However, I have no reason to believe that Taiwanese advertising is being wholly westernized, and therefore future researches are needed.
Being traditionally classified as collective society, Taiwan has undergone tremendous transformation in terms of political/economical systems and the advertising industry through the process of industrialization and globalization. As to United States, it takes the leading role in the era of globalization and has imposed great impact on most parts of the world in economical or cultural way. Secondly, this research compares individualism/ collectivism appeared in this two different societies. According to the results, the use of single individuals is more pronounced in advertisements from Taiwan (73.1%), and less pronounced in United States (59.0%). This article also finds that advertisements from Taiwan as well as United States both reflect hybrid culture. For example, advertisements from the United States employed large proportion of appeals to self-improvement or self-realization while also contained the image of harmonious grouping. In contrast, advertisements from Taiwan embraced both Western and Eastern cultures, and therefore the content of Taiwanese advertising not only reflected the concerns about others, but contained a greater extent of focus on ambition. However, differences observed tend to be differences in degree, not in kind. In addition, this research also finds that ¡§product category¡¨ and ¡§product origin¡¨ would somehow influence the presentation of cultural values. Future intercultural research should take these two factors into consideration.
In summary, this research found some similarities as well as differences between Taiwan and United States. The contents of advertisements reflect the hybridization of these two cultures and therefore illuminate the complicated and fluid essence of culture. The results imply that contemporary Taiwanese and American advertising is not only a ¡§distorted mirror¡¨ but a ¡§melting pot¡¨ of cultural values. There is no longer absolute and remote distance between East and West. Considered the macro structural power behind the advertising context, this research has admitted that the relationship among social context, cultural values and advertising should never be simple. The abundance and complexity of culture needs to be examined through different viewpoints instead of simply dichotomy or only one single research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0728106-154652 |
| Date | 28 July 2006 |
| Creators | Wang, I-Chia |
| Contributors | none, Ping Shaw, none |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0728106-154652 |
| Rights | unrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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