The influence of cultural differences on global advertising strategy

Do cultural differences influence on consumers’ purchase decision making? The emergence of a global consumer culture emphasizes the idea that sharing similar needs and wants is common among group of people, and several international marketing literatures assert that many products are developed to serve universal needs. However, global marketing practitioners today have encountered a paradigm shift from the old globalism to the new globalism, which states that products and messages developments are not necessary to maximize economies of scale, but that it is more important to understand consumers’ specific needs and local conditions. This study attempts to empirically test this issue by asking consumers in two different cultures, the American individualist culture and the Thai collectivist culture, to identify the attributes they consider important in the purchase of three product categories, as well as the advertising messages that they feel effectively suit to each product category.