Creative Strategies in American and Japanese Tv Commercials

JYOTIKA RAMAPRASADANDKAZUMI HASEGAWA

CREATIVE STRATEGIES INAMERICAN AND JAPANESETV COMMERCIALS:A COMPARISON

JYOTIKA RAMAPRASAD isassociate professor in theSchool ot Journalism atSouthern Illinois University,Carbondale Her researchinterests tocus on advertisingstandardization/localizationissues and cross-culturalcomparisons of advertisingcontent and ot consumers.Current research projects in-clude a study of Japaneseand American student con-sumers. Chinese advertisingcontent, and views of interna-tional agencies on standard-ization of advertising

KAZUMI HASEGAWA is adoctorai student in the De-partment of Telecommunica-tion at Michigan State Univer-sity Her research interestsinclude cross-cultural com-parisons of advertising andconsumer behavior and theeffectiveness of comparativeadvertising In collaborationwith her present coauthor,she IS currently engaged in acomparative study of Japa-nese and American studentsas consumers.

Advertising content con-sists of two major ele-ments: strategy and tac-

tics {or execution). Attempts toenumerate these, to exemplifytheir suitability for advertisingsituations, and to ascertain theircommunication effects reachback several years and still con-tinue. Similarly longstandingand perennial is the debate onwhether advertising should beglobally standardized or tailoredto the specific culture of individ-ual countries. However, fewcross-culturally comparativestudies have been done on cre-ative strategy.

The purpose of this article isto fill this lacuna. The paper firstdiscusses typologies of creativestrategy and the "standardiza-tion-localization" debate. It thencompares American and Japa-nese commercials, particularlywith regard to the use and for-mat of creative strategies.

Creative Strategy Defined

Creative strategy comprisesthe "what is said" in an adver-tisement rather than the "how itis said," which is an executionalquestion. Frazer's (1983) defini-tion is lucid: "Creative strategyis a policy or guiding principlewhich specifies the general na-ture and character of messagesto be designed." A sound cre-ative strategy generally ensuressuccess; good executions giveadvertising the added punch.Even studies on executional fac-tors underscore strategy's impor-

tance. In a replication of a studyby Stewart and Furse (1986),Stewart and Koslow (1989) con-clude that:

Both studies point to the im-portance of having somethingunique and differentiating tosay about the advertised prod-uct. . . . These empirical find-ings are quite consistent withthe best creative wisdom,which has long advocated cre-ating unique selhng proposi-tions, distinctive brand im-ages, and making the productthe "hero" of the commercial.

Attempts to formulate a typol-ogy of creative strategies havespawned dichotomous to multi-ple categories, have includedsituational variables, and haveconfused strategy with execu-tion. The dichotomy of informa-tional and emotional appeals iscommon; several explications ofthis dichotomy are available inthe literature (Preston, 1987).

Vaughn (1980) considers thisfeeling/thinking dichotomy a sit-uational variable and combines itwith level of involvement to pro-pose a model of four creativestrategies; he suggests that thematch between strategy and thesituation (the quadrants) willmaximize internalization of themessage. Similarly, Simon's(1971) classification of creativestrategies was undertaken toprovide "useful instructions forchoosing the most effectivetypes of advertisements for vari-ous market and product-brandsituations." Simon's categories.

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A M E R I C A N A N D J A P A N E S E T V C O M M E R C I A L S

however, are not classified bystrategy alone; they also usesome executional and sales pro-motions criteria. While he doesnot call them strategies, Shimp's(1976) typology of "messagestructure" also includes bothstrategy and tactics.

Starting anew, Frazer (1983)culled a list of creative strategies(generic, preemptive, uniqueselling proposition [USP], brandimage, positioning, resonance,and affective) from "advertisingliterature and trade press, fromconversations with advertis-ing people, and analysis ofcommercials."

After Laskey's (1988) attemptto use this typology resulted inlow intercoder reliability, he de-veloped a new typology, basedon Frazer's framework. This ty-pology first coded an ad into theinformational/rational or the im-age/emotional category and theninto a specific strategy. The in-formational/rational category in-cluded hyperbole, preemptive,USP, comparative, generic-Thinking, and other-Thinkingstrategies. The image/emotionalcategory included brand image,user image, use occasion, ge-neric-Emotional, and other-Emo-tional strategies. Later (Laskey,Day, and Crask, 1989), the no-menclature was changed to in-formational and transforma-tional, respectively, for the first-stage categories, and the "other"category was dropped from thestrategies. Using this codingscheme, Laskey, Day, and Crask(1989) achieved satisfactory inter-coder reliability.

These strategies are, however,indigenous to the United States.At the global level, two ques-tions arise: Does the advertisingof other countries use these cre-ative strategies? And, if it does,what are the similarities and/ordifferences by country in the useof these strategies?

The "Standardization-Localization" Debatein Advertising

The debate on "globalization,"begun in the 1960s, initially fo-cused on and largely advocatedstandardizing advertising (andmarketing) in Europe (Dichter,1962; Roostal, 1963). While mid-dle-of-the-road opinions wereheard in the 1960s, it was the1970s which heralded a morecautionary approach and sug-gested taking cultural and psy-chological differences betweencountries into consideration(Britt, 1974; Douglas and Dubois,1977). Results of cross-culturallycomparative studies on consum-ers and consumer responses toadvertising supported this ap-proach (Green, Cunningham,and Cunningham, 1978; Hornik,1980). A 1983 article by Levitt,strongly endorsing standardiza-tion, brought the debate back tothe forefront in the academicliterature and unleashed a waveof responses (Harris, 1984;Onkvisit and Shaw, 1987) andresearch in the '80s. Some of thisresearch effort focused on thecomparative content of advertis-ing, the content being themes,techniques, information, andsuch. (A representative but notexhaustive review follows.)

One of the earliest studies(Marquez, 1979) of this kindfound similarities in Philippine,Thai, and U.S. advertising. Theauthor reflects that this is atypi-cal and suggests that, beforeadopting standardization, practi-tioners must check indigenouscultures. Rice and Lu (1988)found that Chinese magazineads had high levels of informa-tion as compared with Americanadvertising, the comparison be-ing based on findings from pre-vious studies on American ad-vertising. Weinberger and Spotts

(1989) found less humor inAmerican than British advertis-ing. Tse et al. (1989) found thatHong Kong, China, and Taiwandiffered in the consumptive val-ues such as technology, modern-ism, and hedonism that theyused in their advertising.

Of direct interest to this studyis Reid et al.'s (1985) compari-son, using Simon's classificationscheme for creative strategy, ofClio-winning domestic and inter-national television commercials.The study found only limitedsupport for cross-cultural differ-ences in creative strategies, pos-sibly because it grouped all in-ternational commercials togetherrather than by nation.

Also of interest to this study,research on Japanese commer-cials, within and without a com-parative framework, has becomeavailable recently. Madden, Ca-ballero, and Matsukubo (1986)found Japanese advertisementsto be more informative thanAmerican advertising. Anotherstudy (Hong, Muderrisoglu, andZinkhan, 1987) found that Japa-nese advertising used more emo-tional and informational cuesthan American advertising.Mueller (1987) found that, whileJapanese advertising used tradi-tional appeals like soft sell, italso used modern and Western-ized appeals. Ramaprasad andHasegawa (1990) found that Jap-anese commercials used theemotional appeal more than theinformational appeal.

Despite this wave of responsesand research, the issue of global-ization is far from settled. Thedebate has been confoundedlargely by the lack of an opera-tional definition of standardiza-tion. Further, distinctions areseldom made between marketingand advertising standardizationand, within advertising(referent = creative usually)standardization, between strat-

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egy and tactics.Against the background of the

globalization debate and withinthe tradition of content research,this study compares Americanand Japanese advertising. Thedifference is that it focuses onformat variables as well. Whilecreative strategy is the contentvariable of special interest to thisstudy, number of camera shotsis the format variable of interest;further, the comparison attemptsto study the relationship be-tween the two. Specific researchquestions are:

(1) What are the differences, ifany, in (a) the products ad-vertised, and (b) the lengthof commercials on Americanand Japanese television?

(2) What are the differences, ifany, in the overall and spe-cific strategies used byAmerican and Japanesecommercials?

(3) What are the differences, ifany, in the number of cam-era shots used by Ameri-can and Japanese commer-cials by overall and specificstrategies?

Methodology

The study reported on hereused the method of contentanalysis. The channels, dates,and times were picked randomlyfor March and April 1989. ABC,CBS, and NBC were used for theAmerican sample. The Japanesechannels were the four commer-cial channels available where therecording was done. For eachday, one channel was pickedrandomly for each country. Thedates included all seven days ofthe week and were picked bythe "constructed week" method.The same sample dates wereused for both countries. Thetime for each day was pickedrandomly in one-hour slots start-

ing at 7 p.m. for both countriesand ending with 9 p.m. for theAmerican sample and 10 p.m.for the Japanese sample. Thesample, therefore, consisted ofcommercials within 14 hours ofprograms in each country.

All commercials were codedfor product category (e.g., food),length, number of camera shots(visual changing), strategy (e.g.,informational), and specific strat-egy (e.g., comparative).

The measure of overall andspecific strategies was based onthe Laskey, Day, and Crask(1989) typology which first clas-sifies ads into informational ortransformational concepts bor-rowed from Puto and Wells(1984). Informational advertisingpresents factual information; thead should have data which theconsumer accepts as being verifi-able. Transformational advertis-ing is affect-based and endowsthe use of the brand with a par-ticular positive experience.

Next, the typology classifiesads into specific strategies. It ishere that the measure used inthis paper differs. Recall that thestrategies were hyperbole (hasthe general appearance of beingfactually based, but is not so),preemptive (has an objectivelyverifiable fact(s), but the fact(s) isnot the basis for comparison noris it pointed out as beingunique), USP, comparative, andgeneric for informational adsand brand image, user image,use occasion, and generic fortransformational ads.

Categories in content analysis,apart from being mutually exclu-sive and exhaustive, also have toderive from a single classificationprinciple (Holsti, 1969). Laskey,Day, and Crask's (1989) catego-ries do not meet the final crite-rion. Their "generic" category isa product-based classification,while the others are message-based. It is entirely possible to

have a product (i.e., category asdifferent from brand) advertise-ment (such as for milk) whichuses a message strategy such asUSP. The generic strategy wastherefore dropped from the mea-surement of specific strategies inthis study.

Earlier, the indigenous andtherefore culture-specific natureof the measure of strategy wasmentioned; its use in the classifi-cation of Japanese commercialsmay be an ill-suited impositionof structure on content. Ideally,strategies within cultures shouldbe identified first, qualitativecomparisons done next, and, ifwarranted, specific comparisonsdone last. The typology usedhere does not emanate from Ja-pan. Recognizing this limitation,the sample commercials werecoded using the modified Las-key, Day, and Crask typology. Itis also possible that countriesmight not differ as much in theadvertising strategies they em-ploy as in their use and format.

Intercoder reliability tests us-ing Holsti's (1969) formula weredone on a randomly selectedsubsample of 10 percent. Agree-ment was 100 percent for prod-uct category and length, 95 per-cent for involvement, 91 percentfor number of shots, and 90 per-cent for strategy. For each vari-able, averages were calculatedacross countries.

Findings

Description of the Sample.The American and Japanese sam-ples had 451 and 382 commer-cials, respectively. The Americancommercials included 140 televi-sion station or program promo-tions of assorted lengths; these,and similar promotions in the Jap-anese sample {n = 9), were re-moved from subsequent analyses.The final sample size then was311 and 373, respectively, with

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Table 1Distribution of Commercials by Product Category,Strategy (Overall and Specific) by Country

Variables and their categories American commercials

Alcohoi/cigarettes

Household supplies

10

14

Overall strategyInformational

Transformationai

Total

7 (2.3%)

70 (227%)

9 (2.9%)

2 (0.6%)

117(37.6%)

194(62.4%)

311

Length, and

Japanese commercials

Grand total

Grand total minus TV promos

Product categoryAuto/parts

Appliances/furniture

Service

Image improvement

Entertainment/toys

451

311

51 (16.6%)

6 (1.9%)

34(11%)

8 (2.6%)

9 (2.9%)

382

373

30 (8.1%)

26 (7%)

24 (6.5%)

24 (6.5%)

21 (5.7%)

43(11.7%)

81 (22%)

Food

Retail

Total ("Other'

Chi-square =

Length5

7

' not included)

119.73; p. = .00.

61 (19.8%)

62(20.1%)

308

2 (0.6%)

1 (0.3%)

115(31.2%)

5 (1.4%)

369

1 (0.3%)

0

15

20

27

30

45

55

60

Total

Length15

30

Total (only 15 and 30 seconds)

Chi-square = 66.14; p. = .00.

91 (29.3%)

3 (1.0%)

1 (0.3%)

197(63.3%)

1 (0.3%)

1 (0.3%)

3 (1.0%)

311

91 (31.6%)

197(68.4%)

288

234 (62.7%)

1 (0.3%)

0

134(35.9%)

1 (0.3%)

0

2 (0.5%)

373

234 (63.6%)

134(36.4%)

368

135(36.2%)

238 (63.8%)

373

the American programs averaging22 commercials per hour and theJapanese programs averaging 27commercials per hour. In assess-ing total clutter, however, thenumber of promotions on Ameri-can television need to be kept inmind. The modal product cate-gory was household supplies forAmerican commercials and foodfor Japanese commercials (seeTable 1). The modal length was30 seconds for American com-mercials and 15 seconds for Jap-anese commercials. The modaloverall strategy was transforma-tional for both countries. Bothcountries used brand image fromamong transformational strate-gies and the preemptive strategyfrom among informational strate-gies most often.

Products Advertised andCommercial Length. An analysisof the association between coun-try, on the one hand, and prod-uct category and length (15- and30-second spots), on the other,done to answer the first researchquestion revealed a significantassociation between country andproduct category and countryand length (see Table 1). Of theAmerican commercials, 17 per-cent were for auto/parts, 20 per-cent for retail establishments,and 2 percent for alcohol; whileof the Japanese commercials, 8percent were for auto/parts, 1percent for retail establishments,and 12 percent for alcohol. Ofthe American commercials, 68percent were 30-second commer-cials, while of the Japanese com-mercials 64 percent were 15-sec-ond commercials.

Use of Strategies. No signifi-cant association was found be-tween country and overall strat-egy. That is, one country did notuse either the informational ortransformational strategy moreoften than did the other (see Ta-ble 1). The relationship betweenthe particular informational strat-egy used and country was sig-



Tabie 1—cont'dVariables and their categories American commercials Japanese commercials

Informational strategyHyperbole

Preemptive

USP

Comparative

Total

Chi-square = 25-31; p. =

Transformational strategyBrand image

User image

Use occasion

Total

.00.

34(29.1%)

48(41.0%)

9 (07.7%)

26 (22.2%)

117

118(60.8%)

29(14.9%)

47 (24.2%)

194

20(14.8%)

67 (49.6%)

35 (25.9%)

13(09.6%)

135

155(65.1%)

23 (09.7%)

60 (25.2%)

238

nificant, however. More Ameri-can commercials used thecomparative and hyperbole strat-egies, while more Japanese com-mercials used the USP and pre-emptive strategies. An associa-tion between country andparticular transformational strate-gies did not exist.

In view of the significant asso-ciation found earlier betweencountry on the one hand andproduct class and length on theother, it was necessary to test ifthese variables intervened in therelationship between countryand strategy. While the elabora-tion model (Babbie, 1986) basedon multi-way contingency tablescould be used, its interpretation,particularly when a variable hasmore than two categories, is

More American commercialsused the comparative andhyperbole strategies, whilemore Japanese commercials

used the USP andpreemptive strategies.

complicated and fraught withproblems. Therefore, weightingwas used to equalize Americanand Japanese cell sizes for eachcategory within the two vari-ables, product category andlength. The cell frequencies forJapanese commercials wereweighted up or down to matchcell frequencies for Americancommercials. Chi-square testswere then done to measure theassociation between country andoverall and specific strategies.

The results of these tests repli-cated the original results basedon unweighted data and pro-vided the answer to the secondresearch question: no significantassociation existed betweencountry and overall strategy andbetween country and transfor-mational strategies. For informa-tional strategies, American com-mercials used the comparativeand hyperbole more and Japa-nese commercials used the pre-emptive and USP more (see Ta-bles 2a and 2b).

Format of Strategies. To an-swer the third research question,three analyses of variance wererun, one each for overall, infor-mational, and transformational

strategies. The models tested thecontribution of country, strategy,and country-strategy interactionto variance in number of camerashots used in the commercials.

To control for product cate-gory and length within this anal-ysis, weighting was used toequalize American and Japanesecell sizes for each product cate-gory within each of the twolengths (15 and 30 seconds) usedin this analysis. Again, cell fre-quencies for Japanese commer-cials were weighted up or downto match cell frequencies forAmerican commercials. Also,length was standardized at 15seconds, i.e., number of camerashots was divided by two for30-second commercials.

For the total sample of com-mercials (excluding TV programpromotions and "other" for bothproduct category and length),the country and country-strategyinteraction effects were not sig-nificant (see Table 3). That is,American and Japanese commer-cials did not differ in the num-ber of camera shots they used;also, neither one of the coun-tries' commercials used more/less camera shots for a certainstrategy than did the other coun-try's commercials. The strategyeffect, however, was significant;transformational commercialsused more shots than informa-tional commercials.

For the subset of informationalcommercials, such Americancommercials used more shotsthan Japanese commercials.While the four specific informa-tional strategies are not perfectlyordered, their definitions dosupport an assumption of in-creasing amount of specificity ofinformation. Linear, quadratic,and cubic trends, assuming anincrease in specificity of informa-tion from the hyperbole,through the preemptive andUSP, to the comparative strate-gies were assessed, with particu-

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Table 2aDistribution ot Commerciais by Strategy (Overail and Specific) byCountry Using Weighted Product Category

strategy American commercials Japanese commercials

Overall strategyInformationai

Transformational

Total


Preemptive

USP

Comparative

Total

Chi-square = 22.14; p. =

Transtormational strategyBrand image

User image

Use occasion

Total

.00,

116(37.7%)

192(62.3%)

308

33 (28.4%)

48(41,4%)

9 (07.8%)

26 (22.4%)

116

116(60.4%)

29(15.1%)

47 (24.5%)

192

97 (31.5%)

210(68.5%)

307

11 (11.2%)

54 (55.3%)

22 (22.8%)

10(10.7%)

97

120(57.0%)

25(12.0%)

65 (31.0%)

210

Note: The frequencies for American commercials are slightly differentbecause product category "other" was removed from this analysis.

from those in Table 1

lar interest in any interaction ofthese trends with country. Thisanalysis revealed significant qua-dratic and cubic trends in num-ber of shots; that is, the increasein shots did not exhibit a linearparallel to the increase in speci-ficity. Rather, the increase wasS-shaped and peaked in the USPcommercials.

In view of the comparativefocus of this paper, the two sig-nificant interaction contrastswere of larger interest. Theseindicated that the increases anddecreases in number of shotsover the informational strategieswere different for the two coun-tries; the changes were a lotlarger for American than Japa-nese commercials.

For the subset of transforma-tional commercials, Americanand Japanese commercials didnot differ in the number of shotsthey used. Trends run on the

transformational strategies, as-suming an increase in specificityfrom the brand image to the use-occasion strategy, were not sig-nificant. That is, number of cam-era shots did not exhibit linearor quadratic trends from brandimage, through user image, touse-occasion commercials. Thesignificant linear interaction re-vealed that, while in Americancommercials number of shotsincreased with a decrease inspecificity (from use occasion tobrand image), in Japanese com-mercials the reverse was thecase.

Summary and Discussion

This study revealed some sim-ilarities and some differences inAmerican and Japanese commer-cials. America and Japan differin the products they advertise

on prime-time television. Whilethe difference in alcohol adver-tising can be accounted for bythe legality of such advertisingin Japan, other differences maybe an indication of differences inmedia audiences and/or con-sumer behavior in terms of pur-chase decision-makers. Thecountries also differ in the com-mercial lengths they favor; Ja-pan's larger use of 15-secondcommercials could be yet an-other manifestation of the Japa-nese emphasis on the compactyet efficient product.

In the frequency of use of in-formational and transformationalstrategies and of the three trans-formational strategies—brandimage, user image, and use oc-casion—the two countries weresimilar. These findings appear tocontradict most of the literatureon Japanese advertising whichpoints to its comparatively"emotional" nature and its useof soft sell. The explanationmight partly reside in the differ-ence in the two measures, trans-formational and emotional, thelatter more likely an executionalelement present even in Japa-nese informational commercials.In fact, Japanese commercialswere not as unambiguous in na-ture by the American creativestrategy typology as were Amer-ican commercials. For example,because of the Japanese reticenceto use comparative advertising(Wagenaar, 1978), comparativecommercials (informational strat-egy) often also included a trans-formational appeal. Further,even when Japanese commer-cials used such informationalstrategies as USP and hyperbole,their executions were ratheremotional in nature. The impli-cation of using American strate-gies and their definitions to clas-sify Japanese commercialsshould be noted.

Past literature (Hong, Muder-risoglu, and Zinkhan, 1987) has


A M E R I C A N A N D J A f ' A N E S E T V C O M M E R C I A L S

Tabie 2bDistribution of Commercials by Strategy (OveraiiCountry Using Weighted Length

strategy American commercials

and Specific) by

Japanese commercials


Transformational

Total


Preemptive

USP

Comparative

Total

Chi-square - 22,90; p. -

Transformational strategyBrand image

User image

.00.

108(37.5%)

180(62.5%)

288

29 (26.9%)

46 (42,6%)

8 (07,4%)

25(23,1%)

108

112(62.2%)

28(15.6%)

107(37.1%)

181 (62.9%)

288

10(09.3%)

56 (52.7%)

26 (24.5%)

14 (13.5%)

107

119(65.5%)

17(09.1%)

Use occasion

Total

40 (22.2%)

180

46 (25 4%)

181

Note: The frequencies for American commercials are slightly different from those in Table 1because all lengths except 15 and 30 seconds were removed from this analysis. Results ofcrosstabs between country and strategy using these selected lengths vi/ithout weighting rep-licated the results of the original crosstabs given in Table 1.

pointed to the smaller use ofcomparison by Japanese com-mercials. This reflects the Japa-nese "cultural characteristic ofavoiding confrontation"; in ad-dition, the Japanese do notwant competitors to lose face(Wagenaar, 1978). The presentstudy confirms this, finding asmaller use of the comparativeinformational strategy in Japa-nese commercials. The studyalso finds that the Japanesemake less use of the hyperbolestrategy. Instead, the Japaneseuse preemptive and USP com-mercials more often, possiblybecause these present less ex-treme alternatives to present in-formation to the consumer.

The number of camera shotsused did not differ between thetwo countries for overall andtransformational commercials;

for informational commercials,however, Americans used morecamera shots than did the Japa-nese. Among Japanese consum-ers "advertising liking" plays animportant role; these consumerstransfer the affect toward adver-tising to the product advertised.To develop this affect, Japanesecommercials use mood-creating,nature symbols which are se-rene. It is possible that the fewercamera shots in Japanese infor-mational commercials might be amanifestation of the aforemen-tioned practice of adopting anemotional execution of informa-tional strategies.

More important, however,were the differences by countryin the number of shots usedacross the informational andtransformational strategies. Forinformational commercials, while

overall the number of shotspeaked with the USP strategyfor both countries, the changeswere much smaller, exhibiting amore even pattern, for Japanesecommercials. In American com-mercials, some of the changeswere rather dramatic, pointingpossibly to a clearer demarcationbetween strategies—these beingalso associated with certain for-mat conventions. This mightalso be an indicator of an ill fitbetween the American typol-ogy of strategies and Japaneseadvertising.

Within the transformationalstrategies, commercials in thetwo countries exhibited diametri-cally opposite patterns: Ameri-can commercials used more cam-era shots as they moved to lessspecificity; Japanese commercialsdid just the opposite using moreshots with more specificity.

A review of the findings re-veals that the largest differencesin American and Japanese adver-tising existed in the use and for-mat of informational strategies.

Conclusion

Two major conciusions can bedrawn from the study, one sub-stantive and the other method-ological. While acknowledgingthat similarities exist betweenAmerican and Japanese commer-cials which might facilitate theuse of some standardization inadvertising, the differences andtheir span (possibly media andcertainly creative content and

. . the largest difference inAmerican and Japanese

advertising existed in theuse and format of

informational strategies.

Journal ot ADVERTISING RESEARCH—JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1992 65


creative format) suggest theneed for adaptation, particularly

in the case of informational strat-egies. These findings of this

Table 3Number of Shots As a Function of Country, Strategy (Overall andSpecific), and Country-Strategy interaction*

Function Number ot shots


Transformational

F value = 4.54: PR > F = .03

Country for informational commercialsAmerica

Japan

F vaiue = 7.95; PR > F = 0.00


Preemptive

USP

Comparative

F value (quadratic) = 11.1; (cubic) = 24.9PR > F (quadratic) = .00; (cubic) = .00

Country by informational strategy interactionHyperboie

AmericaJapan

PreemptiveAmericaJapan

USPAmericaJapan

ComparativeAmericaJapan

F value (quadratic) = 5.80; (cubic) = 18.81PR > F (quadratic) - ,02; (cubic) = .00)

Country by transformational strategy interactionBrand image

AmericaJapan

User imageAmericaJapan

Use occasionAmericaJapan

6.7

8.1

6.93

6.42

6.6

6.05

10.75

5.52

6,566.81

5.416.7

19.946.97

5.984.8

10.195.51

8.957.34

5.619.32

study should give pause to prac-titioners who advocate com-plete standardization in globaladvertising.

Equally important is the needfor academics who do cross-cul-turally comparative studies toconsider the transferabilityacross cultures of concepts usedin the comparison. In the case ofthis study, ideally an indigenousdevelopment of the creativestrategy typology for japan withdifferent and/or finer discrimina-tions is warranted. •

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Documents

Creative Strategies in American and Japanese Tv Commercials