Global Consumer Culture and Advertising Research

In the two and a half decades since I officially entered academia, a great deal has changed in terms of internationalization of the advertising field. While studying as a Ph.D. student at Michigan State in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and working with mentors such as Gordon Miracle and R. Dale Wilson, I was very much interested in global advertising. At the time, U.S. academics occupied most of the space in prestigious advertising journals. Moreover, most of the work on international advertising focused on how cultural differences (e.g., Hofstede 1984; Hall 1976) affected purchase intent and was conducted in the context of figuring out the degree to which advertising could or could not be standardized across markets.

With these memories in mind, I recently had the good fortune to speak at two conferences that underscored how far the advertising field has come in terms of internationalization. The first, the Emerging Markets Conference Board (EMCB), a meeting organized by Naresh Malholtra and Steve Burgess that was held in Johannesburg, South Africa. With the support of the Sheth Foundation and others, this annual meeting focuses on helping to integrate scholars from emerging markets more fully into the global community of marketing scholars. It was my distinct pleasure to meet with several young scholars from Africa and to be exposed to the research they are working on. It was notable as to the degree of emphasis on marketing's relationship to sustainability and the environment as well as mobile and digital advertising, indicative of the common topics emphasized and studied around the world.

The second conference was the Asian Advertising Summit organized by Kineta Hung of Hong Kong Baptist University. At this meeting, Shintaro Okazaki (Journal of Advertising), John Ford (Journal of Advertising Research) and myself along with several leading Asian scholars gave presentations on current topics and discussed the state of research and future research. For me, the gathering underscored how much more internationalized the global advertising research community has come and just how many common research interests there are. After the EMCB conference in Johannesburg I also had a chance to take a side trip to Botswana and with the assistance of the U.S. Embassy in Gabarone and Ambassador Earl Miller was able to give lectures at Ba Isago Unviersity, University of Bothu, Limkokwing University, as well as giving talks to groups of young entrepreneurs. I was highly impressed by the faculty, students, and business people at these talks and by how common our interests in the advertising field are. Throughout these trips, I very much felt like part of a global community, largely influenced by the same events and trends.

A few striking aspects of how far the field has come were also clear after these events. At the Asian Advertising Summit, Shintaro Okazaki showed data on how much more internationalized the authorship in advertising journals has come. The contrast with 25 years ago in this respect is marked, and I see this in recent summary data of submissions to IJA, which are no longer North American dominated. Thanks to the efforts of numerous European scholars and aided by the creation of the European Advertising Academy and its excellent ICORIA Conference (IJA's home conference), we see strong representation from Europe in the journals. In Asia, there is not yet a single Pan-Asian association holding annual meetings, but numerous scholars, many trained in the U.S. or Europe, are publishing in top journals. There are also frequent contributions from Australia and New Zealand. While these developments are very positive, it is, nonetheless clear that there is room to expand the publishing community to include more contributions from emerging markets such as Africa, South America, and emerging markets in Asia. I would very much welcome more submissions with data collected from such markets and encourage established scholars to team with scholars from emerging markets.

I came to the clear realization after attending these meetings as to how much the idea of global consumer culture applies to advertising academia. Clearly, scholars from all around the world are interested in very similar advertising topics. With four conglomerates plus Dentsu accounting for more than fifty percent of advertising revenues, this is, perhaps not so surprising. That said, the degree to which issues such mobile advertising, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility get discussed all over the world is striking. With this in mind, it makes sense that scholars focused on cross-cultural or international advertising are more frequently employing global consumer culture theory in their research (Arnould and Thompson 2002).

In spite of the advances that have taken place, there remains a need to advance theoretical application in global advertising research beyond just isolated cultural dimensions in order to advance knowledge (Taylor 2010). Global consumer culture theory, which has been defined as “a family of theoretical perspectives that address the dynamic relationships between consumer actions, the marketplace, and cultural meanings” (Arnould and Thompson 2002, p.868), has, indeed, taken hold in more advertising research. The Global Consumer Culture Positioning (GCCP) perspective, as advanced by Alden, Steenkamp and Batra (1999) is also being applied in advertising research in order to explore the degree to which global positioning (vs. local or foreign) works in cross-national advertising. Recent examples applying these perspectives include Ford, Mueller, and Taylor (2011), Taylor and Okazaki (2015), Rajibi et al. (2017), and Jun et al. (2017).

As a veteran of several studies using cultural dimensions myself (see, e.g., Miracle, Taylor, and Chang 1992; Miracle, Chang, and Taylor 1992), I do not mean to suggest that insight cannot be gleaned from the use of frameworks such as those of Hofstede and House. That said, I do believe studies are stronger when framed in the broader context of a theory such as GCC or Alden, Steenkamp, and Batra's (1999) positioning theories. Application of acculturation scales focused on global consumer culture (see Cleveland and Laroche 2007; Cleveland et al. 2015) would also appear to be highly promising in understanding the impact of global consumer culture on consumption behavior. Moreover, perspectives on convergence and how it is manifested in consumer behavior and reaching consumers via promotion would be useful (Mueller and Taylor 2013).

In sum, recent interactions from around the world have led me to want to see additional research delving into how profound the impact of global consumer culture on advertising is, both in advanced economies and emerging markets. Convergence in what scholars are interested in s easily noticed, and the advances that have been made in the field are real. Yet, there is a long way to go in understanding the nuances of global consumer culture and its application to global markets.