An Examination of the Effects of Various Types of Content Containing National Stereotypes in Print Advertising.
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2020-07-09
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en
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‘French elegance’, ‘Italian passion’, and ‘German craftmanship’. All three are examples of national stereotypes that can be used by advertisers in their product advertisements to enhance consumers’ evaluations. Such national stereotypes can be presented through implicit content (i.e. visual portrayals), or explicit content (i.e. verbal utterances). And although both of these types of content containing national stereotypes are regularly used by advertisers, their possible effects on consumers’ evaluations have not yet been studied sufficiently, if at all. Therefore, it seemed to be of utmost importance to study: “How does the use of implicit content, explicit content, and complementary implicit and explicit content – containing national stereotypes – in print advertisements affect consumers’ evaluations?”. Whereby it was hypothesized that: “The use of content containing national stereotypes in print advertisements is evaluated more positively by female consumers than by male consumers.” Four manipulation groups (i.e. no national stereotypes, implicit content, explicit content, and complementary implicit and explicit content) were distinguished in an experimental study. For each of these groups, product advertisements were created for four distinct products (i.e. cheese, baguette, pasta, and pizza) that matched either one of two countries that reflected a primarily emotional national stereotype (i.e. France and Italy; romance). Several consumer evaluations were tested among Dutch participants (N = 263). With regard to most all of the consumer evaluations that were tested, it was found that the use of either explicit content or no national stereotypes was more effective than the use of either implicit content or complementary implicit and explicit content. Besides, it was found that, indeed, female consumers evaluated the use of content containing national stereotypes more positively than male consumers. This gender difference did, however, not affect the overall results. Thus, it could be argued that advertisers should either use only explicit content, or completely refrain from using national stereotypes in their product advertisements.
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