How do international advertisers use consumer culture positioning strategies? A cross-national, cross-category approach

Purpose The present paper explores how advertisers use consumer culture positioning (CCP) strategies in advertising across countries and product categories. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a content analysis approach to investigate usage of CCP strategies and symbols across different CCP strategies, countries and product categories. The authors focussed on country of origin (COO) cues as symbols of CCP. The authors collected printed advertisements from countries at different levels of economic development and communication orientation for the content analysis, namely, Austria ( n = 182), Hungary ( n = 199) and Turkey ( n = 120) and products with high- vs low-involvement levels. Findings Findings of this study indicated that global consumer culture positioning (GCCP) and local consumer culture positioning (LCCP) advertisements relied more on implicit symbols, while foreign consumer culture positioning (FCCP) advertisements predominantly employed explicit ones. Types of symbols and their utilisation varied across countries and product categories, with language, tag lines/logos and brand names being key components across different advertisements. Practical implications The results document the practices of CCP-based advertising, offering important insights on whether and how symbolism can be effectively used for communicating different CCPs across markets. Originality/value Little is known in terms of how specific symbols are used to communicate consumers’ culture. In this study, the authors analysed the content of 501 real-print advertisements across multiple countries and product categories. This study contributes to the theory and practice by revealing how consumers’ culture manifests through diverse COO symbols in advertising imagery and by facilitating the application of such manifestations across market contexts.