Cultural Differences and Advertising Expression: A Comparative Content Analysis of Japanese and U.S. Magazine Advertising

Abstract American and Japanese print ads were content analyzed to examine how advertising expression and content differed in the two cultures. The degree of emotional appeals, informativeness, and comparativeness of advertising were the dimensions studied. As hypothesized, Japanese ads were evaluated as more emotional and less comparative than American ads. In contrast to a priori notions, Japanese ads were found to contain at least as many information cues as American ads.