By 1990 U.S. advertisers were spending more than $130 billion dollars annually in non-U.S. markets, and the share of global advertising expenditures accounted for by U.S. companies had reached nearly 50% of total global expenditures ( Levin & Lafayette 1990). With the recent opening of Eastern European and Chinese markets, these figures are likely to grow at even faster rates as the turn of the century approaches. Advertising is part of the increased globalization of mass media -- rapidly evolving into a truly global media village. The effects of global media on individuals, nations, and cultures demand critical and empirical attention by practitioners and academicians alike. For practitioners the question of when and for what products a global versus a multinational strategy, tailored to individual cultural groups, may prove more effective has obvious ramifications for creative and media buying decisions. For academics, critical concerns include how to conceptualize culture and the question of how culture-bound are current theories and the empirical corpus of data upon which these theories rest.
The theme for the Ninth Annual Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference concerned cultural variation and its impact on advertising practice and on audience response. The papers presented at the conference covered a broad range of theoretical perspectives and methodologies. Topics ranged from analyses of differences in advertising strategy as a function of culture of origin and target culture to how consumers' responses to advertising are influenced by their culture. One focal point of the conference, and of this volume, was the need for consumer researchers to consider the extent to which their theories and empirical findings are
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