Designing cross‐cultural advertising research: a closer look at paired comparisons

Notes that more than 20 years of cross‐cultural comparative research results have suggested that advertising content varies between countries which are culturally dissimilar. Tests the proposition that paired comparisons of countries will yield statistically significant differences for most country pairs. Reports that of the 55 country pairs used in this study, 100 per cent of the pairs resulted in statistically significant differences on at least nine of the 29 values examined and that subsequent analysis found that insignificant results can largely be attributed to cultural similarity. Points out, however, that even when countries are culturally similar, statistically significant results may still be found. Suggests that research which tests for between‐country differences may not be insightful without theoretical support for the comparisons.