Abstract
Are traditionally collectivist cultures shifting to individualism due to economic and cultural globalization? This study addresses the question from a media message perspective by analyzing manifest individualism and collectivism in Chinese advertising. Drawing on the cross-cultural theory of Individualism-Collectivism, the study develops a measurement instrument and applies it in a content analysis of 523 TV commercials aired in 2003 in China. Results show that the predominant cultural orientation reflected in local-product Chinese TV commercials is still collectivism, but not in foreign-product commercials.
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