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Four hundred advertisements published in Bengali periodicals in four different time periods,
1947-48, 1971-72, 1991-92 & 2004-05, were content analyzed to find out whether advertising
appeals concerning cultural values underwent any change during these years. Jewellery,
cosmetics, garments and banking were the four categories of products/ services that were used in
the study. Considering the repetitive appearance of advertisements in the periodicals & the
multiplicity of products and available periodicals, a multistage sampling has been used. Content
analysis was done manually by three coders following the procedure laid down by Krippendroff
(1980). Findings suggest that Advertising trends relating to the traditional values and focus on
the collective, which was again a cultural tradition, underwent change over the years. Traditional
values were found to be replaced by trends of modernization and westernization and the
individual started getting priority over the collective. The reasons and implications of these are
discussed.
*
Research Student, tubaitoo@yahoo.co.in
**
Senior Lecturer, sonalide2002@yahoo.com
Dept. of Psychology, University of Calcutta, UCSTA, 92, A.P.C. Road, Kolkata-700 009.
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INTRODUCTION:
Culture is a fuzzy set of attitudes, beliefs, behavioural norms and basic assumptions and
values that are shared by a group of people, and that influence each member's behaviour and
his/her interpretations of the meaning of other people's behaviour (Spencer-Oatey, 2000). Thus,
every human society has a distinctive style of thinking and determining the value priorities. A
synchrony is expected to exist between cultural and individual value orientation. Culture may be
thought of as an overdetermined space, in which the value orientation of people living there and
message? Will they respond favourably? Or should the advertising message be customised to
reflect local culture? This question is one of the most fundamental decisions, when planning an
advertising campaign in different cultural areas, and, not surprisingly, one of the most frequently
discussed issues in advertising today. Some believe that as the world is growing ever closer, it
can be treated as one large market, with only superficial differences in values (Levitt, 1983). It is
thought that the same values can be used to persuade customers to buy or consume the product.
The opposing side is content with the fact that the basic needs may well be the same around the
*
Research Student, tubaitoo@yahoo.co.in
**
Senior Lecturer, sonalide2002@yahoo.com
Dept. of Psychology, University of Calcutta, UCSTA, 92, A.P.C. Road, Kolkata-700 009.
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world, however they argue that the way in which these needs are met and satisfied differs from
culture to culture. Any marketing (and advertising) campaign thus tries to reflect the local habits
Many researchers have contributed to the debate, examining a sample of advertising for
particular ways of portraying lifestyle and themes used (Gilly, 1988; Tansey, Hyman & Zinkhan,
1990); advertising strategies and information content (Lin, 1993; Zandpour, Chang & Catalano
1992; Ramaprasad & Hasegawa, 1992), the use of humour (Weinberger & Spotts, 1989; Alden,
Hower & Lee, 1993), Americanization of appeals used (Wiles, Wiles & Tjernlund, 1996;
Mueller 1992) or they tested for a mix of different themes, styles, appeals or advertising content.
Advertising appeals are used to appeal to the values a consumer holds, and as such, values
are the underlying source of appeals (Chan & Cheng, 2002). Advertising tries to appeal to the
positive values that are held in the target group, or taken at large, the target society. If advertising
is "out of touch" with the target group, it may alienate the target group, as the consumer can no
longer identify with the product. Thus advertising is often used as reflection of the cultural
Since getting independence from over 200 years of foreign rules Indian economy
underwent vast changes, and entered the era of globalization, that has brought about many
cultural as well as life style changes. It is commonly held that Indian society tries to hold on to
its traditional value orientation, and accepts modern values with much skepticism. The present
study using content analysis purports to find out whether advertising appeals underwent any
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METHODS:
SAMPLE
In the present study advertisements were taken as the sampling units, & words and themes
The sources of advertisements, used for the purpose of the present study, were periodicals
(print media). Advertisements from four time periods were sampled. These were: (1) 1947-48
(2) 1971-72 (3) 1991-92 & (4) 2004-05. The reasons for selecting the first three time periods
are that during these periods some major social or economic change took place, while the last
Four different products/ services were sampled in this study, namely (a) Garments, (b)
Cosmetics, (c) Jewellery, & (d) Banking & financial services for the four time periods sampled.
These product categories are selected as the popular cultural belief, which has started to undergo
changes very recently, was that the first two product categories are meant for both the gender
groups, while the next two categories of products and services are intended specifically for
Anandalok.
These periodicals were selected for the study as it is assumed that the major part of their
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Sampling Technique
multiplicity of products and available periodicals, a multistage sampling has been used in the
present study.
Sample Size
Altogether 400 advertisements were used in the present study. For each section, namely
Jewellery, Garments, Cosmetics & Banking altogether 100 advertisements were taken distributed
OBSERVERS
Three observers rated the advertisements following specific recording instructions given to
them. All the observers were at least graduates in Social Sciences, and were capable of handling
the categories and terms of the data language. They were from both genders: two of the
PROCEDURE
Initially the questions that seemed most relevant to the study were compiled and on the
basis of these objectives a tentative set of essentially a priori dimensions was set up. A part of the
advertisement samples were then examined thoroughly and on the basis of this the
dimensions were discussed, modified and tentative sets of categories under each dimension were
formed by the researchers and their coworkers. This set of dimensions was then applied by the
coders to a sample of the material to be coded, resulting in the deletion of a dimension, and the
rephrasing of others. Then each dimension was reappraised and the categories were further
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under each dimension. The dimensions and their categories were then pretested by the coders to
ensure that the advertisements to be coded made frequent enough reference to the dimensions to
be worth coding, and that the dimensions themselves did not overlap with one another, the
dimensions were clear and unambiguous enough to assure that intercoder agreement could be
achieved among independent coders. The categories under each dimension were as mutually
exclusive as possible. When it was demonstrated from the pretests that the dimensions and
categories were adequately refined and clarified, they were settled upon as final. Once the
dimensions and categories under them were finalised, the recording instructions were written for
the coders, recording sheets were prepared and the whole sample of advertisements were content
RESULTS:
Two dimensions that emerged from the study were that of traditional- modern-western values
Table-I shows that in all cases of all sections of advertisements in 1947-48 mark of traditional
values were found prominent. In case of garments section there occurred only some instances
where western values came with traditionality. In these advertisements a welcome gesture is
started to become evident for western fashion signs, while traditional features still remaining the
dominant trend. In 1971-72 though traditionality was still the prominent trend, a clear trend of
modernization revealed itself. The waning of traditional values from advertisement contents in
1991-92 was clearly visible when the advertisements of these years were compared with those of
the previous time periods studied. Though traditionality was still there in all the sections of
advertisements, a clear drift towards western values was clearly visible in the sections of
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luxurious commodities or personal products like cosmetics & garments, but in case of jewellery
the trend towards westernization is somewhat less observable. In the advertisements of banking
sector, however, trend toward modernization came more prominent and this trend intensified in
2004-05. On the other hand in case of cosmetics section, trend of westernization appeared
dominant. In advertising of the present time unmixed traditional value was presented in some
cases, but mostly the dominant trend was that of westernization or modernization as the case may
be, in which only hints of traditionality appeared.
[Insert table-II somewhere near here]
In Bengalee culture, as is true of Indian culture as well, the priority has always been the
collective (eg, consider the joint family structure), in which individual felt safe and comfortable.
Accordingly the collective got priority in advertisements in the yester years. From table-II it can
be seen that during 1947-48 in most of the advertisements sampled the customers were addressed
as members of the community, family or social group – as part of a collective. Focus was rarely
on the individual consumer. In 1971-72 (in the phase of nationalization of Indian economy)
individual identity of the consumer started gaining importance, though focus on group identity
was still prevailing. It is evident that advertisements in which individual consumers were
addressed, they were taken as part of a collective may be the family or sometimes their gender or
economic group. It has been observed from the study that individual consumers became the
prime focus of advertisers’ consideration in the years to come. The importance of group got
reduced to a considerable extent in the 1991-92, which became almost marginalised in 2004-05.
DISCUSSION:
Cultural value orientation and individual value orientation should be considered in the
broader scenario of overall socio-politico-economical forces acting upon them. Economy plays
the role of the dominant signifier in both individual and social life (Sirgy, Lee, Miller &
Littlefield, 2004), in the structure of family, kinship relationship and even to state policy
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decisions. Thus the social as well as cultural values undergo changes with changing economic
perspective of a country. Rostow (1960) highlighted that in its path of transition from traditional
to modern phase, an economy exhibits significant changes in its social and cultural front, which
In the midst of the engulfing tide of ‘globalization’, in the academic space of social-
2003), was coming up as an issue of prime importance. The issue under discussion is certainly
going to be its encounter in a space where the given notions of ‘third world’ and the other view
of the ‘world of the third’ is entering into a dialogue. The theoretical discourse of post-
colonialism and late-capitalism have convincingly shown that getting modern to the ‘Third
World’ countries was almost synonymous with copying of the west. In a colonial culture like that
is prevailing in India, feudal and oriental values received western ideas with obvious conflict.
The Bengalee civil society was not any exception to this. The changing trend of advertisements
over the years as found from the present study, also reflect this general picture. Initially there
occurred a blend of western and modern values with the existing traditional values, which with
time gave way to the domination of the western trends. In infrastructural sectors like Banking, in
the current atmosphere of liberalization, modernization has become more important than the
earlier promise of national economy and upliftment of general standard of peoples’ life.
Traditional values being defined in a different way lost its earlier connotation. Values prevailing
in the west- life and its expansionism are now being challenged through re-reading of the text (as
we may view society as a text) and its hegemonic frame is coming under erasure. Thus the
hegemonic notions of ‘pre- modern’, ‘under developed’ being problematised giving new meaning
to modernization. In this process of transformation left behind values are getting revived, while
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academic discourse is engaged in discussing ‘modernity’ and ‘west’ within a contingent plateau
in its contested- and meta-space. In this study modernization is seemed not just equivalent to
westernization, it owned its own markers that have got transformed over time. Modernization in
the 1940s or 1970s was not what it does mean today. A fusion of values resulted in the
emergence of new standards, which now serves as the baseline standing on which modernization
have to be viewed. In this new phase older values are revisited and redefined following the terms
set by the ‘open market’. On the whole the meaning of modernization is overdetermined by
western ideals.
From table-II, it became apparent how the consumer looses his group identity and the individual
identity grows in volume. In the earlier years individual consumer is given priority only in very
few advertisements and the family or the collective received maximum attention. Compared to
this in advertisements of the later years individual consumer is addressed in most of the cases.
Even after problematising the ideas of teleology, the Indian and the Bengalee peoples’ collective
social life can be traced back to their socio-cultural origin, and certainly it has always been a
source of pride to them. They always valued their heritage of collective identity and allowed
foreign values to assimilate, to become a part of the collective with obvious pride. But the
‘Market’ has its own power to turn the individual customers into competition-oriented, self-
seeking/ egoistic consumers. Older, traditional values and the fondness for collective life thus are
difficult to hold on (Korte & Mattig, 2002), in the face of domination of the ‘Market’. The
overall value shift is so overwhelming in the face of the rising force of globalization (Kurdija &
Uhan, 2002), that any resistance seems futile and fragmented. This trend is clearly visible in the
advertisements that were taken up for the present study. After the passage of half of a century
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since independence, the consumer, in terms of his/ her desire to possess and that of becoming
unique, has turned out to be an out and out individual – an entity with his/ her pseudo-desires.
The advertisements in their transformation from 1947 to 2005 shifted its impetus from the
collective needs to the individual based needs. The evolving of the individual entity gave rise to
CONCLUSION:
Advertising trends relating to the traditional values and focus on the collective were found
to change over the years. Traditional values which once signified identity of the nation is with
time replaced by trends of modernization and westernization. Now traditional values are taken
more selectively, valuing only those that are recognised by the west. Along with the waning of
truly traditional values and rise of westernization, individual consumer started receiving greater
community.
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REFERENCES:
Alden, L. & Hoyer, W.D. (1993). Identifying global and culture-specific dimensions in humor in
Bell, A. (2001). ‘Bugger!’: Media language, identity and post modernity in Aotearoa/ New
Chan, K. and Cheng, H. (2002). One country, two systems: Cultural values reflected in Chinese
Australia, Mexico, and the United States. Journal of Marketing, 52, 75-85.
Kurdija, S. & Uhan, S. (2002). Med druzbeno in zasebno razseznostjo potrosnje (Between social
Publications.
Levitt, T. (1983). The globalization of market. Harvard Business Review, 61, 92-102.
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Rostow, W. W. (1960). The stages of economic growth. London: Cambridge University Press.
Sirgy, M. J., Lee, D. J., Miller, Chad & Littlefield, James E. (2004). The impact of globalization
on a country’s quality of life: Toward an integrated model. Social Indicators Research, 68(3),
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Spencer-Oatey, H. (2000). Culturally speaking: Managing rapport through talk across cultures.
London: Continuum.
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Wiles, C.R., Wiles, J.A. & Tjernlund, L. (1996). The ideology of advertising: The United States
Zandpour, F., Chang, C. & Catalano, J. (1992). Stories, symbols and straight talk: A
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TABLE-I: Showing the categories dimension-II (all in percentages) appearing in the four sections
Mod 4 16 4 20 40 4 8 28
Wst 72 20 32 64 24 50
Trd+Mod 4 8 8 4 16 20 16 12 24
Trd+Wst 8 4 4 12
Mod+Trd 4 20 16
Wst+Trd 20 4 20 8 6 8
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Table-II: Showing the categories under dimension-I (all in percentages) appearing in the four
Ind 12 4 88 40 52 60 88 52 92 56
Ind+ 16 12 16 32 8 12 60 12 20 8 32 24
Cltv+ 4 16 4 16
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