15230423

Content analysis in crosscultural advertising research:
insightful or superficial?
Dawn Lerman
Fordham University
Michael Callow
Morgan State University
Historically, cross-cultural researchers have used content analysis as their primary method
for comparing ads. Recently, however, content analysis has been criticised for being a
purely descriptive method that provides the researcher with little if any insight regarding
advertising effectiveness. To address this methodological limitation, we argue that
researchers should incorporate consumer interpretation into their cross-cultural
advertising studies. More specifically, we explicate a variation of content analysis that is
predicated on consumer interpretation of the advertising under study and test it against
the traditional content analytic approach. The results of our study and the implications for
future cross-cultural advertising research are discussed.

INTRODUCTION
Interest in cross-cultural advertising research has led to several
empirical studies that examine similarities and differences in
advertising content between various countries. It is generally assumed,
rightly or wrongly, that advertisements reflect the target market’s
values and beliefs (Zhang & Gelb 1996). Researchers have therefore
tried to predict the relative frequency of certain advertising appeals
and techniques employed in two or more countries based on cultural
stereotypes. For example, Biswas et al. (1992) found that French ads
tend to rely on sex appeal to a greater extent than American ads, which
is consistent with the perception that the French consumer is more
sexually liberated and sensual than the American consumer.
International Journal of Advertising, 23, pp. 507–521
© 2004 Advertising Association
Published by the World Advertising Research Center, Farm Road, Henley-on-Thames,
Oxon RG9 1EJ, UK

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING, 2004, 23(4)

Cross-cultural studies of this kind typically use content analysis as
the primary method for comparing ads (Samiee & Jeong 1994).
Content analysis is a technique used to classify text or objects into
predefined categories for the purposes of comparing basic
components (i.e. content) of that text or those objects (Krippendorff
1980). Content analysis was originally devised to quantify qualitative
data through capture of the presence, or frequency, of a word or
object. In advertising, this would include the presence (or absence) of
a particular gender (Wiles et al. 1996), of black and white versus colour
images (Cutler & Javagli 1992), or of a visual portrayal of the product
(Cutler & Javagli 1992). However, content analysis has also been used
in a cross-cultural context to capture more complex meanings such as
humour (Biswas et al. 1992) and emotions (Graham et al. 1993).
Despite its widespread usage, content analysis has been criticised
for providing description without prescription (Samiee & Jeong 1994).
That is, content analysis tells us what advertising is (i.e. ad content)
rather than what it does (i.e. how it effects consumers and society),
thus limiting the contribution of such research for both theorybuilding and marketing practice (Kover 2001). This limitation is
reflected in the call for and shift towards incorporating consumer
interpretation in advertising research (McQuarrie & Mick 1999).
Methods such as textual analysis, for example, recognise ‘densely
convoluted webs of meaning’ (Stern 1996, p. 62) and the effects of
such meaning on consumers. Similarly, application of reader-response
theory has helped to refocus the attention of advertising researchers
to the response side (Scott 1994).
Obvious appeal notwithstanding, there is a dearth of cross-cultural
research that focuses on the target audience’s interpretation of ads. In
this paper, we argue for a shift towards consumer interpretations in
cross-cultural advertising research in order to uncover truly interesting
and relevant insights that are useful for both academics and
practitioners. The paper begins with an exploration of embedded
meaning in advertising and its associated methodological implications.
We then explicate a variation of content analysis that is predicated on
consumer interpretation of the advertising under study (Lerman &
Callow 1999) and test it against the traditional approach. The results of
our study and the implications for future cross-cultural advertising
research are discussed.

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CONTENT ANALYSIS IN CROSS-CULTURAL ADVERTISING RESEARCH

MEANING IN ADVERTISING
The interpretation of ads requires more than just semantic
understanding. The meaning of an ad is often found in metaphors that
are expressed by words and/or pictures (Cook 1992). According to
Fraser (1993, p. 332), a metaphor is ‘an instance of nonliteral language
in which the intended prepositional content must be determined by
the construction of an analogy’. In language, many idiomatic
expressions convey metaphors, as is the case with the expression ‘goes
over your head’, which Americans and many other English speakers
would interpret as signifying ‘incomprehensible to you’ (Cook 1992).
Such expressions can appear in ad copy or they can be suggested by
the visual elements of an ad. An example of the latter case appears in
an ad for Ultra Bold laundry detergent showing money pouring down
the drain and in an ad for an insurance firm which shows a competitor
literally stealing the shirt from someone’s back (Cook 1992).
An understanding of metaphors such as those contained in
advertising can also benefit from Saussure’s view that linguistic signs
are arbitrary. Cook (1992) exemplifies how this description of the sign
can be extended to describe the metaphor ‘the heat is on’. In this
example, ‘heat’ is the signifier (i.e. vehicle) and ‘difficulty’ is the
corresponding signified (i.e. concept). In Saussure’s semiology, the
connection between a signifier and a signified only holds because it is
known to hold by the people who use the system. As such, by making
appropriate choices and combinations, a person who knows the
system encodes his or her thoughts into words and transmits them to
another person who is familiar with the same system. Rhetorical
theory expresses it this way: a sender ‘crafts a message in anticipation
of the audience’s probable response, using shared knowledge of
various vocabularies and conventions, as well as common experience’
(Scott 1994, p. 252).
The common thread in the various approaches to language and
meaning is that metaphors are culturally determined (Fiumara 1995).
In advertising, this is the case whether they are expressed through the
ad copy or through the visual elements of the ad (Scott 1994). The
implication is that an ad appearing in one country may very well be
misinterpreted or meaningless in another, since the consumers from
these countries do not operate within the same system and do not
share the same knowledge. This possibility has methodological

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consequences in cross-cultural advertising research. It is to these
consequences that we now turn.
CAPTURING MEANING IN ADVERTISING THROUGH
CONTENT ANALYSIS
As suggested earlier, content analytic studies have become increasingly
complex, particularly in the type of content they seek to capture.
Although classification based on meaning poses a more challenging
task for the coder than does the traditional count, coders are likely to
agree on such classifications if they share the knowledge required to
interpret the predetermined categories, extract meaning from ads, and
relate that meaning to the categories (Eco 1979). In a within-culture
(i.e. one country) analysis, judges presumably share the language and
cultural systems required for such agreement. Interjudge reliability
should therefore be high, provided that the researcher devised coding
categories with care and properly trained the judges (Kassarjian 1977).
However, cross-cultural content analysis, by its very nature, requires
interpretation of material created within two or more language and/or
cultural systems. Thus interjudge reliability is not only a function of
the coding scheme and judge training, but also of the judges’
understanding of the relevant systems. Cross-cultural researchers
often address this issue by selecting bilingual judges.
BILINGUAL JUDGES
The methodological advantages of judge bilingualism are perhaps best
understood by considering the methodological limitations associated
with monolingual judges. In using monolingual judges, the researcher
must restrict the material coded by each judge to advertisements from
the judge’s own country, assuming that ads from the other countries
are in a different language. It would also be questionable whether, say,
American judges should code Australian or English ads, despite
sharing a ‘common’ language. This means that in most cases the
material from each country is content-analysed by a separate pair of
monolingual judges and that there is no measure of interjudge
reliability between the sets of judges.
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Suppose, for example, that American judges code ads from the
United States and German judges code ads from Germany. Since the
researcher cannot calculate interjudge reliability between the American
and German judges, s/he would not know whether they applied the
set of categories in a consistent fashion. It would be unclear, then,
whether the greater frequency of a given appeal, such as humour, in
one country versus the other is due to any real difference between the
two countries in advertising content or instead to systematic
differences in how the German and American judges identified
humour. As a result, researchers who are concerned with the validity
of their findings often use bilingual judges to content-analyse all ads
from the two countries under study.
By using bilingual judges, researchers can determine whether a
consistent standard has been used to classify material from across the
selected countries. One must be careful, however, when selecting
‘bilinguals’ – especially when the codes are complex in nature – to
ensure that these judges are truly bilingual in a cultural as well as a
linguistic sense. This might imply that the bilingual judge should have
spent considerable time residing in both countries and that s/he is
familiar with not only the literal elements of the language but also the
non-literal elements that are used to build analogies within each
culture. In other words, the bilingual judge should also be fluent in the
‘silent language’ (Hall 1959).
BILINGUALISM AND THE CAPTURE OF MEANING
The use of bilingual judges to code material from the two countries
under study enables the researcher to determine whether the codes
have been applied consistently to the ads from both countries. In other
words, it allows the researcher to calculate an interjudge reliability
measure within-country as well as across-countries. However,
consistent application of a coding scheme does not guarantee validity,
nor does it guarantee that this code is being used in a manner that is
relevant to the hypotheses under question. It also ‘in no way indicates
that the codings reflect a popular or widespread interpretation of the
texts’ (Ahuvia 2001, p. 147). In fact, Ahuvia (2001) argues that forcing
coders to agree, as is done in content analysis, eliminates much of the
cultural context within which consumers come to understand ads and
thus reduces the relevance of the research.
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These issues suggest that the researcher should be concerned with
selecting judges that are both bilingual and cultural translators.
Unfortunately, cultural translators are not always readily available and,
when they are, it is difficult to ascertain statistically whether or not the
bilingual judges are indeed assigning codes across countries in a
culturally relevant fashion. For instance, it would be difficult to know
whether a German person who has lived in Spain for a lengthy period
of time and speaks Spanish fluently would necessarily think like a
Spaniard when interpreting a Spanish ad. As a remedy, Lerman and
Callow (1999) suggest developing narratives from native consumers
for each ad and then coding these culturally relevant narratives rather
than the ads themselves.
AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO CROSS-CULTURAL
CONTENT ANALYSIS
The Lerman and Callow (1999) approach has subjects from the target
audience (not the judges) interpret the messages themselves in the
form of narrative texts. In other words, subjects from the American
target audience would interpret American ads and subjects from the
Spanish target audience would interpret Spanish ads. Subjects would
be instructed to base their interpretations on a set of questions
established by the researcher. Obviously, the goals of the research
project would determine the nature of the questions. At this stage,
however, the subjects are not acting as judges of the material but are
instead being asked to provide a written account of their interpretation. The purpose of this stage is to convert any implicit messages in
the material into explicit information.
Lerman and Callow recommend using at least three consumer
subjects to interpret each ad in order to gauge the level of similarities
in interpretation. This means that researchers can determine whether
each subject’s interpretation of an ad is idiosyncratic or in line with
other members of the target audience. If, say, three subjects developed
narrative texts for an ad and all three indicate that the ad is sexy, then
we could assume that the ad in question has a strong sexual appeal. If,
on the other hand, only one of the subjects finds the ad to be sexy,
then the researcher would assume that this is a personal rather than
cultural interpretation. This allows for greater variability in scores for
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each ad (if we were using three subjects, the range would be 3) than
the binomial approach generally used in content analysis.
Once the cultural interpretation has taken place, judges can be used
to categorise the narratives. Since the material has been converted
from an advertising format comprising both visual and verbal
elements into a more explicit textual narrative, the judges can rely on
language skills rather than interpretative skills to classify the material.
Then, following completion of the coding, the researcher can
determine, through an interjudge reliability measure, whether the
judges have assigned the codes to the material from the two countries
in a consistent fashion.
Method
The traditional and narrative approaches to content analysis were
tested in a study comparing ads from Spain and the United States.
Narratives were collected from consumers within the target market for
the ads. One pair of bilingual judges coded these narratives and
another pair coded the ads directly.
Stimuli
Ten ads for hard liquor and ten ads for cars were selected from each
country. All ads appeared in either the American magazine GQ or the
Spanish magazine Quo. These magazines were chosen based on the
similarity of their content and the demographic profile of their
readership. The hard liquor and car categories were chosen based on
the frequency with which ads appear for such products in GQ and Quo
and the high level of interest in such categories among readers of the
two publications.
Ten consumers in each country who fit the demographic profile of
the magazine readership (male between the ages of 22 and 35) and
thus are presumably in the target market for the ads served as ad
interpreters and provided the narratives to be coded. Each consumer
received a set of five ads from either GQ or Quo – depending upon
their country – along with five sheets – one for each ad – that asked
them the following questions:
• In your own words, please describe the ad.
• Ignore what the advertiser may have intended and describe your
opinions and feelings about the ad.
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• What do you think the advertiser was trying to communicate
with the ad?
• How do you know what the advertiser was trying to communicate with this ad? What makes you think so?
These questions have been used as a framework by both Mick and
Politi (1989) and Phillips (1997) in examining consumer’s inferences as
evoked by an ad’s message and thus provide a useful precedent for
interpreting the ads. The questions evoke both the descriptive and the
interpretative aspects of the ads and are, therefore, useful for eliciting
both strong and weak implicatures from consumers.
The ad interpretation process should have yielded 100 narratives to
be coded (10 ads/country × 2 countries × 5 consumers interpreting
each ad). However, one American consumer failed to complete the
task in its entirety, resulting in a total of 95 narratives.
Coding scheme
The coding scheme consisted of nine codes: traditional, modern,
productivity, enjoyment, independence, status, affiliation, family and
morality. These codes represent a subset of values that Pollay (1983)
identified as expressed in advertising and recommends for use as a
coding scheme in advertising research. This subset was not intended
to be exhaustive, but rather to represent a range of values that
appeared in the ad stimuli. Since the interest here is in the coding itself
as opposed to the content of the coding, it was not necessary to
develop an exhaustive coding scheme as is typically recommended (see
Krippendorf 1980; Pollay 1983).
In applying the coding scheme, judges were instructed to make
decisions about each code separately so that the choice of one code
would not preclude them from assigning any other code. Thus, for
example, the presence of ‘traditional’ did not necessarily rule out the
presence of ‘modern’. Judges were also not required to assign a code if
none seemed applicable. As a result, any particular ad or narrative
could be assigned anywhere from zero to nine codes. Judges were also
instructed to assign a code as present regardless of the degree to
which it is present in the ad or narrative. These instructions were
provided in recognition that ads can contain both strong and weak
implicatures (Phillips 1997).
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Judge selection and training
All four judges fit the demographic profile of the magazine readership
(i.e. male, between the ages of 22 and 35). Judges were assigned to one
of two coding tasks based on time available for the job (i.e. coding the
ads required fewer hours than did coding the narratives).
Judges were trained in pairs by one of the researchers and an
assistant. Training sessions began with an overview of content
analysis, judge responsibilities and the coding scheme. Judges were
then given sample ads or narratives, depending on the task to be
performed. The judges and trainers discussed the first two samples in
order to arrive at a coding decision for those samples. Once judges
confirmed that they were comfortable with the coding scheme and
procedure, they coded the next three samples independently and then
compared their assigned codes. Disagreements were discussed and
reconciled. This process was repeated with another five samples or
until the judges felt ready to begin coding the final set.
Coding procedure
Each judge completed the coding task independently and then met
with his counterpart to compare assignments and reconcile disagreements. Disagreements were reconciled through discussion. On one
occasion, the narrative judges could not reach agreement. In this case,
the researchers heard the arguments posed by the two judges and
made a final decision.
RESULTS
Assessment of interjudge reliability
Interjudge reliability for the two sets of judges was assessed using
both raw agreement rates and adjusted agreement rates (see Table 1).

TABLE 1 INTERJUDGE RELIABILITY BY CODING APPROACH
Ads (%)
69.4
36.4
62.3

Raw agreement
Cohen’s kappa
Perreault and Leigh’s I

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Narratives (%)
82.7
29.6
80.9


Narrative coding yielded a higher raw agreement rate than did ad
coding. Moreover, only the narrative coders demonstrated reliability at
or above the acceptable cut-off level of 0.80 (Kassarjian 1977). The ad
judges and narrative judges exceeded chance agreement by 36.4% and
29.6% respectively.
Following reconciliation, the ad judges reached 100% agreement.
The narrative judges reached a post-reconciliation agreement rate of
99.9%. 100% agreement was achieved following researcher intervention as described above.
Ad versus narrative coding
A chi-square analysis of codes (code presence or absence) by material
coded (ads or narratives) was used. The analysis revealed statistically
significant differences in the coding generated by the two approaches
(ads versus narrative) for six of the nine codes: Modern (χ2 < 0.005),
Productivity (χ2 < 0.0001), Independence (χ2 < 0.005), Affiliation (χ2 <
0.005), Family (χ2 < 0.01), and Morality (χ2 < 0.005) (see Table 2).
In each of these cases, the ad judges applied the codes more
frequently than did the narrative judges. Thus, in considering the
direction of the observed differences, it appears that the ad judges
may have ‘read into’ the ads more deeply than did the consumers who
wrote the narratives.
These statistically significant differences may or may not suggest
that ad coding and narrative coding resulted in different substantive
results. The effect depends on the pattern of differences. Thus, chisquare analysis was used to determine the degree to which differences
TABLE 2 CODE COMPARISON BY MATERIAL
Ads (frequency, %)
Tradition
Modern**
Productivity***
Enjoyment
Independence***
Status
Affiliation**
Family*
Morality**

Narratives (frequency, %)

7, 35.0
15, 75.0
10, 50.0
10, 50.0
8, 40.0
8, 40.0
8, 40.0
4, 20.0
3, 15.0

20, 21.3
37, 39.4
12, 12.8
40, 42.6
12, 12.8
29, 30.9
11, 11.6
4, 4.2
1, 1.1

* χ2 < 0.01
** χ2 < 0.005
*** χ2 < 0.0001

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TABLE 3 COMPARISON OF SUBSTANTIVE RESULTS BY CODING
MATERIAL
Ads
(frequency, %)
Code

Spain

Tradition
Modern
Productivity
Enjoyment
Independence
Status
Affiliation
Family
Morality

5, 50.0
5, 50.0
6, 60.0
4, 40.0
3, 30.0
2, 20.0
4, 40.0
4, 40.0
2, 20.0

USA
2, 20.0
10, 100.0**
4, 40.0
6, 60.0***
5, 50.0
6, 60.0***
4, 40.0
0, 0.0*
1, 10.0

Narratives
(frequency, %)
Spain
11, 22.5
7, 34.7
5, 10.2
19, 38.8
9, 18.4
18, 36.0
7, 14.0
4, 8.0
1, 2.0

USA
9, 20.0
20, 44.4
7, 15.6
21, 46.7
3, 6.7***
11, 25.0
4, 8.9
0, 0.0*
0, 0.0

* χ2 < 0.05
** χ2 < 0.01
*** χ2 < 0.10

in ad and narrative coding would change the conclusions drawn about
Spanish and American advertising. More specifically, two chi-square
analyses were performed, one comparing countries and codes in the
case of ad coding and one comparing countries and codes in the case
of narrative coding (see Table 3).
These two analyses produced comparable results for Family (χ2 <
0.05 for both ads and narratives). Furthermore, they indicate no
difference between Spanish and American advertising for Tradition,
Productivity, Affiliation, Enjoyment and Morality. However, the approaches
are inconsistent with regard to Independence (χ2 < 0.36 for ads,
marginally significant at χ2 < 0.10 for narratives), Modern (χ2 < 0.01
for ads, χ2 < 0.33 for narratives), and Status (marginally significant at
χ2 < 0.10 for ads, χ2 < 0.25 for narratives). These differences indicate
a lack of convergent validity, thus preventing any conclusions from
being drawn regarding the relative presence of particular values in
Spanish and American advertising.
DISCUSSION
The above study compared traditional content analysis against the
Lerman and Callow (1999) narrative variation. In this study, the two
methods did not yield the same results (see Table 4).
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TABLE 4 SUMMARY OF SUBSTANTIVE RESULTS
Ad
Tradition
Modern
Productivity
Enjoyment
Independence
Status
Affiliation
Family
Morality

Narrative

–
USA
–
–
–
USA
–
Spain
–

–
–
–
–
Spain
–
–
Spain
–

The ad coding identified differences between Spanish and
American advertising with respect to Modern, Status and Family,
whereas the narrative coding identified differences with respect to
Independence and Family.
The question remains whether narrative coding is superior to ad
coding as Lerman and Callow (1999) suggest. These differences raise
the question as to which is better as coding material, ads or narratives.
From a reliability standpoint, narrative coding appears superior.
However, the choice of narrative or ad coding should not depend on
reliability alone. If the researcher, for example, seeks to compare the
proportion of Asians in a set of ads from the United States and
Germany, then narrative coding would be entirely unnecessary since
the judge need only rely on explicit (visual) messages. However, if the
researcher is interested in determining the importance of minorities in
those ads, a cultural interpretation of the ads is required for coding
judgements (Wilkes & Valencia 1989). In this case, narrative coding
may be more appropriate. Similarly, narrative coding may be more
appropriate for identifying advertising themes or appeals. An
advertiser may use the same ad or image (e.g. a well-dressed woman)
across countries, but consumers in one country may differ in their
interpretation of the ad theme (e.g. achievement) from those in
another country (e.g. taking care of oneself). Thus, managers may find
the results of narrative coding in cross-cultural studies particularly
useful in revealing aspects of the underlying cultures.
As discussed, ad coding raises serious methodological concerns,
particularly when the study in question seeks to uncover the cultural
underpinnings of advertising. Narrative coding appears to offer a
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reliable alternative in this case. Of course, narrative coding has its own
limitations, most notably that fewer ads can be coded with the same
resources, due to the practical requirements of recruiting subjects.
Additionally, coding is limited to what informants can or are willing to
express. Again, however, the high reliability for narrative coding offers
researchers greater flexibility in choosing judges with fewer concerns
about cultural biases than would be the case in ad coding.
It should be noted that the narrative approach differs significantly
from traditional content analytic studies since what is being contentanalysed is the consumers’ interpretation(s) of an ad and not the ad
itself. However, the underlying motivation behind much of crosscultural research in marketing is to identify cultural similarities and
differences between groups of people. The narrative approach
explicitly recognises the possibility that an ad with seemingly
standardised content can be interpreted differently – be it by judges or
consumers – from one culture to another.
CONCLUSION AND DIRECTIONS FOR FURTHER
RESEARCH
This paper examines the limitations of content analysis in crosscultural advertising research and tests a variation on content analysis
designed to overcome these limitations. Based on a comparison of
reliability measures and substantive results, it appears that narrative
coding is a superior approach to ad coding in cross-cultural advertising
research. These findings call into question the results of numerous
cross-cultural studies. More specifically, they suggest that consumers
may not derive the same meaning as that reported by researchers. If
such research is intended to influence cross-cultural advertising
research and practice, this is particular problematic because, as Ahuvia
(2001, p. 152) points out, ‘texts only influence consumers through
consumers’ understanding of the texts’. As such, researchers might
consider returning to the ads used in prior cross-cultural content
analytic studies, perform the two-step process required to generate
and code texts, and compare the results to those originally obtained.
Such comparisons would not only serve to validate the claims made
here regarding the differences between the traditional and narrative
approaches to content analysis, but would also aid in the refinement of
specific guidelines for applying the two-step narrative version. These

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studies, then, would provide an important step in overcoming the
methodological problems which have so often been cited as
hampering the development of and contribution made by crosscultural marketing and consumer research (Malhotra et al. 1996, Sin
et al. 1999).
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dawn Lerman (Ph.D., Baruch College, City University of New York)
is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Schools of Business at
Fordham University. Dr. Lerman’s research focuses on cross-cultural
and language-related issues in consumer behavior, advertising and
pricing. Her research has been published in a variety of academic
journals including the European Journal of Marketing, Journal of
Advertising Research, the Journal of Product & Brand Management, and
Psychology & Marketing.
Michael Callow (Ph.D., Baruch College, City University of New
York) is an Assistant Professor of Marketing and International
Business in the Earl G. Graves School of Business & Management at
Morgan State University. Dr. Callow’s research interests focus on
cross-cultural issues relating to consumer behavior, advertising, and
pricing. His work has been accepted at various refereed journals,
including the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Product &
Brand Management, the International Journal of Nonprofit & Voluntary
Sector Marketing, and the Journal of Euromarketing.
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