Comparing advertising effectiveness in South-American and North-American contexts: testing Hofstede's and Inglehart's cultural dimensions in the higher education sector

ABSTRACT

This research compares the effectiveness of advertising and relational marketing in two countries characterized by varying levels of both Hofstede's and Inglehart's cultural dimensions – Peru (high-power distance, high collectivism, survival and traditional values) and Canada (low-power distance, high individualism, self-expression and secular-rational values). Survey data from a high credence service sector (higher education) in both countries is used for the analysis. The results indicate that advertising and relational marketing have direct effects on choice in Peru, but do not have significant direct effects on choice in Canada. Advertising does, however, affect positively perceptual outcome measures (perceived marketing effectiveness) in Canada. Additionally, we find that advertising and relational marketing have an indirect impact on choice and perceived marketing effectiveness through the mediation of perceived informativeness and influencers in both countries. These results point to the need to account for mechanisms and mediating variables when building theoretical frameworks in cross-country studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Advertising effectiveness
• relational marketing
• Hofstede's cultural dimensions
• Inglehart's cultural dimensions
• marketing accountability
• Peru
• Canada
• cross-country
• higher education

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dr Eladio Angulo-Altamirano (former president of Universidad Autónoma del Perú) for providing access to data from a sample of study in Peru.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. These indirect effects are significantly different from zero after running Hayes (2013) procedures and using 5,000 random samples. See Table 5 for more details.