Advertising in Developing and Emerging Countries: The Economic, Political and Social Context

Citation

Hao, W.(A). (2013), "Advertising in Developing and Emerging Countries: The Economic, Political and Social Context", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 151-152. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761311304979

Globalization and the fast pace of economic development in emerging markets have had a profound impact on the work both of academia and practitioners in the field of advertising and marketing communications. The book Advertising in Developing and Emerging Countries brings a wealth of insights into global advertising and cross‐cultural communications.

This book is divided into five parts and contains seventeen chapters. The first part includes four chapters discussing advertising industry in Africa and the Middle East. Part Two focuses on advertising practice in Asia. Part Three examines advertising in four European countries: Kazakhstan, Moldova, Poland, and Slovenia. The fourth part consists of two chapters in which the authors discuss advertising in South America. Part Five explores cross‐cultural comparisons of advertising.

The first two chapters focus on the advertising industry in Nigeria. In the opening chapter, Emmanuel C. Alozie examines values in Nigerian print advertisements produced by Western multinational corporations. By using the conceptual framework of cultural imperialism, dependency, convergence, and globalization, the author attempts to discover “what are the values, symbols and context conveyed in Nigerian advertisements?” (p. 23) and “do the values, symbols and context conveyed in the ads promote products or services, or do they expose the social conditions of Nigeria?” (p. 5). In Chapter 2, “Advertising in Transition: A Case study on Nigeria's Burgeoning Market” Olugbenga C. Ayeni provides a big picture of the advertising industry in Nigeria. The author begins by “reviewing the evolution and growth of advertising as an industry” (p. 44) and concludes with the discussion of the future of advertising in the country.

In Chapter 3, Aliaa Dakroury provides a content analysis of a variety of advertisements selected from four Arabic social magazines. The author is aiming at exploring “the influence of advertising in constructing, enforcing, and/or changing consumers' behavioral patterns of consumption” (p. 59) based on a selection of advertisements from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The key findings suggest that:

• •

  there is a difference in taste themes between print and television ads;

• •

  the Arabic taste has a close relation with the theme of “luxury”; and

• •

  music is widely used in television ads and “sign” language is used in both television and magazine ads.

For those who are interested in advertising in Israel, Chapter 4 by Amir Hetsroni demonstrates how Israeli advertising industry has developed over the following five eras:

1. 1.

   days of the wilderness (1930‐1960);

2. 2.

   the innocent generations (1960‐1967);

3. 3.

   the beginning of modern advertising (1967‐1980);

4. 4.

   the professional age (1980‐1993); and

5. 5.

   the belated TV age (1993 and onward).

In Chapter 5, Jan Quarles reviews the development of the advertising industry in Cambodia. In addition, the author provides some background information of the country's economic development and media development.

Amy O'Connor and Mary Frances Casper in the sixth chapter examine the use of indirect advertising in China. Specifically, the authors focus on the case of tobacco sponsorship in China. They conclude that sponsorships of special events of social significance and financial contributions to causes provide Western tobacco companies the opportunities to tap into local market and increase the likelihood that “the corporation will be viewed as a good corporate citizen and worthy of support” (p. 106).

In Chapter 7, Anuradha Venkateswaran assesses the political, social, economic and cultural influence on advertising in Indonesia. First, information on the political, economic, demographic, and growth of consumerism country are provided. Next, the chapter discusses the cultural context of advertising along the five dimensions postulated by Hofstede (2001), the legal restrictions, and the development of advertising industry in Indonesia. Third, the author applies the cultural context to advertising content in the country. Finally, the chapter concludes that global advertisers in Indonesia “have to be careful to balance the desire for economic growth and increasing consumerism on the one hand, with the necessity of upholding traditionally held Asian socio‐cultural principles/beliefs on the other”(p. 134).

The exploratory work by Tej K. Bhatia and Mukesh Bhargava in Chapter 8 focuses on “unconventional media in general and wall advertising in particular” (p. 140). In their study of wall advertising in India, the authors examine a sample of over 2, 000 wall advertisements that were collected from villages in three zones in India and in six languages: English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Marathi and Bengali. In order to reach the rural markets in India, the authors suggest that advertisers should rely on a complex mix and manipulation of conventional and unconventional media.

Fei Xue discusses in Chapter 9, the general characteristics of communication styles in Eastern Asia (especially China, Japan and South Korea).

Chapters 10, 11, and 13 provide an overview of the advertising industry in three European countries: Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Slovenia respectively. In Chapter 10, Amos Owen Thomas examines the advertising practice in post‐communist Kazakhstan. Michael H. McBride's Chapter 11 discusses the challenges and opportunities for advertising industry in Moldova. In their Chapter 13, Michael H. McBride and Janez Damjan provide a detailed description of the advertising industry in Slovenia.

In the twelfth chapter, Lepkowska‐White and Brashear attempt to examine “changes in print advertising in Poland after 1989” (p. 205). By using longitudinal content analysis, a total of 822 ads collected in different periods and taken from the four most popular Polish magazines were analyzed. One of the key findings suggests that the theory of advertising evolution is useful in predicting major changes in advertising content in Poland.

The focus of Chapters 14 and 15 is on South Americ's advertising industry. In Chapter 14,Gladys Torres‐Baumgarten first discusses the evolution of advertising industry in Latin America throughout the twentieth century, followed by an assessment of current advertising practice based on a recent empirical study, which focuses on two research objectives: to investigate “what aspects of the advertising development process are standardized or adapted in Latin America” (p. 245) and to explore “the role that the subsidiary (versus the home country office) plays in advertising development for their multinational clients in Latin America” (p. 245). In addition to offering “an overview of the advertising industry structure in Latin America” (p. 253), in Chapter 15, Jaime S. Gomez provides an interesting case analysis of “a successful campaign of product and brand recognition carried out by the National Federation of Coffee Growers that positioned Colombian Coffee at the top level of global coffee markets” (p. 263).

Chapters 16 and 17 provide two cross‐cultural comparisons studies across different countries. The empirical study by Bruce A. Huhmann and Jennifer J. Argo in Chapter 16 makes a contribution to “the understanding of gender roles and social power” (p. 282) by comparing advertisements from Africa (Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda) against advertisements from Canada and the USA. In Chapter 17, Joseph P. Helgart and Anne Zahradnik demonstrate the comparison of direct‐to‐consumer advertising strategies used in Japan, New Zealand and the USA.

The book finishes with the epilogue, in which Emmanuel U. Onyedike points out that the common thread among the chapters of this book is “the concern over the values and context that advertising messages convey” (p. 313).

In sum, this is an easy‐to‐read book that provides a rich set of both theoretical frameworks and advertising industry practice used by scholars and practitioners. It succeeds in expanding our understanding of various advertising practices in developing and emerging countries in a broader scope of economic, political and social context. It differentiates itself against other advertising books as it mainly focuses on developing and emerging markets. Advertising in Developing and Emerging Countries reaches a wide audience as it should attract readers who are interested in global advertising, cross‐cultural consumer behavior, communications, and marketing in general. It could be used as a supplementary reading material for students of advertising, marketing, public relations, media and international studies.