An Analysis of Japanese Television Commercials

Abstract

Content analysis of 410 prime time television commercials sampled from four Japanese television stations finds that, at all product involvement levels, Japanese commercials use the emotional appeal more than the informational appeal, sometimes with very indirect product selling approaches. At the same time, only a small percentage of these commercials do not use information cues at all. In the sample, the modal length was 15 seconds and the modal product was food/drinks. Also, Western influence was evident: a majority of the commercials used spoken and written English and about a sixth used Western music and non-Japanese (particularly Western) characters; the Japanese attach attributes such as modernism and value to Western symbols.