How do international advertisers use consumer culture positioning strategies? A cross-national, cross-category approach

Purpose - The present paper explores how advertisers use consumer culture positioning (CCP) strategies in advertising across countries and product categories.

Design/methodology - The study employs a content analysis approach to investigate usage of CCP strategies and symbols across different consumer culture positioning (CCP) strategies, countries and products categories. We focus on country of origin (COO) cues as symbols of CCP. We collect and content analyse print ads from countries at different levels of economic development and communication orientation, namely Austria (n=182), Hungary (n=199) and Turkey (n=120), and products with high vs. low involvement levels.

Findings - GCCP and LCCP ads rely more on implicit symbols, while FCCP ads predominantly employ explicit ones. Types of symbols and their utilisation varies across countries and product categories with language, taglines/logos, and brand names being the key component across different ads.

Practical implications - The results document the practices of CCP-based advertising offering important insights on whether and how symbolism can be effectively used for communicating different consumer culture positioning across markets.

Originality - Little is known in terms of how specific symbols are used to communicate consumer culture. In this study we analyse the content of 501 real print ads across multiple countries and product categories. We contribute to theory and practice by revealing how consumer culture manifests through diverse COO symbols in advertising imagery and by facilitating the application of such manifestations across market contexts.