The ultimate goal of advertising, regardless of the approach employed, is to persuade its target audience to make decisions that favor the advertiser. However, advertising, as a communication tool, has deeper structural properties, including a plethora of cultural semantics and nuances that require a committed and attentive deciphering for a proper convergence of message meaning. Many empirical investigations into advertising embrace a paradigm based on consumer behavior in the context of commercial activities. This school locates the tenets of consumer demographics within the constraints of economic indices. The paradigm, however, ignores the opportunity to study advertising within the more qualitative measures of cross-culture contexts. Through a critical-analysis, anchored on the standardization versus specialization debate, this paper relocates the discourse on the role of culture within the study of commercial communication across borders.

Key Words:  Advertising; Advertising  Campaigns; Brands; Culture; International Advertising; Product Categories; Marketing Communications; Transnational Corporations                     

^JCMRJournal of Communication and Media Research, Vol. 1, No. 2, October 2009,  147 – 157.

About the author

Samuel K. Tesunbi, Ph.D., is a lecturer at The American University of Nigeria, Yola, Nigeria.

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Tesunbi, S. K. (2009): Culture and international advertising: Perspectives on the standardization versus specialization debate. Journal of Communication and Media Research 1(2): 147 – 157.