Hofstede’s Individualism-Collectivism Dimension and Linguistic Adaptation on Social Media: How Mercedes-Benz Adapts Content on X for the USA and India and Its Effect on Brand Reputation.
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2025-06-23
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en
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This study investigates how Mercedes-Benz adapts its social media content on X for the USA and India, two culturally distinct markets. Using Hofstede's (1980, 2001) cultural dimensions framework as theoretical guidance, with specific focus on the individualism-collectivism dimension, the study analyzes linguistic and storytelling strategies in 48 X captions and examines their influence on brand engagement and reputation. A corpus analysis was conducted, including tests to identify significant differences in language use, sentence structure, engagement strategies, and storytelling styles such as communal and assertive storytelling. The results showed no significant differences in linguistic elements such as pronoun usage, sentence length, or sentence complexity, however, descriptive patterns suggest cultural alignment. Posts for the USA leaned towards assertive storytelling, whereas posts for India leaned towards communal storytelling. More remarkably, posts for the USA significantly outperformed posts for India in terms of likes, reposts, comments, and positive brand sentiment. These findings suggest that cultural adaptation, or the lack of cultural adaptation, could affect brand engagement and reputation on social media platforms.
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