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Part I
Historical and Methodological Underpinnings
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1
International Advertising Research
A Historical Review
Gordon E. Miracle
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to review and evaluate the historical literature on international advertising research. This review includes an assessment of the:
- contributions of such research to knowledge;
- research approaches that have been used in the past;
- research topics that need to be investigated; and
- appropriate research approaches to do so.
International advertising researchers, teachers, and business executives (including students who are future executives or researchers) can make use of such information not only to avoid mistakes of the past but also to maximize the benefits from using such knowledge in the future.
Definition of key terms
Advertising. Historically, most international advertisers have tended to think of advertising in broad terms â to include other marketing communication activities. In the USA in the 1960s the terms âpromotional strategyâ and âmarketing communication mixâ came into wide usage, followed later by âintegrated marketing communication.â For many, the term advertising, broadly defined, continued to be the term of choice. In this chapter âadvertisingâ will be used broadly to include all marketing communication activities. They include not only sales messages in mass media, but also sales promotion, point-of-purchase materials, marketing public relations, customer relations, sponsorship of events, collateral sales materials, corporate advertising, outdoor boards, kiosk advertising, transit advertising, direct marketing, mail order advertising, Internet advertising, and other means to promote the reputation of sellers and to influence customers to purchase or explain to customers how to use and benefit from the brands, products, or services they sell.
Advertising (marketing communication) is a component in the marketing mix. Marketing in turn is a component in the broader mix of interrelated business activities that includes production, finance, and other functions. Viewed as a system, all business activities are functionally related to each other. They are also functionally related to, and must be made in response to, conditions in the business environment: for example, the nature of the market, customer behavior, conditions of competition, laws and regulations, etc.
International advertising. Many terms have been used that are similar to âinternational advertising,â such as export advertising and sales promotion, international promotion, global advertising, multinational advertising, transnational advertising, international marketing communication, and cross-cultural advertising. In this chapter the term international advertising includes all of these meanings.
Most importantly, international advertising is that which is conceived or initiated in, or at least in part influenced, designed, or executed, in one country for use in at least one other country. It is important that those who conduct international advertising research should understand the total international business system, including the complex international business environment.
International advertising research. Broadly, research consists of collecting, processing, analyzing, and interpreting information for a purpose. There are two main purposes of international advertising research: (1) to assist business executives to make profitable international advertising decisions for their specific products and services, and (2) to contribute to general knowledge of international advertising that is potentially useful to a variety of business executives, educators, government policy makers, advertising self-regulatory organizations, and others interested in understanding the process and effects of international advertising. Most research that is conducted for the first purpose is proprietary and not readily available to outsiders; it is not appropriate to include such research here. Instead, this chapter is devoted to research that is intended to contribute to general knowledge of international advertising and to the research approaches and methods needed to advance such knowledge.
The origins of international advertising research
Rudimentary practice must evolve before an occupation, field of activity, or profession can become an academic discipline that is a suitable subject for scholarly research. When a field of endeavor becomes sufficiently important economically or socially it attracts teachers to train new employees for entry-level positions. Initially these teachers draw from their past practical experience. But it soon becomes clear that research is necessary not only to explain but also to lead practice. Leading requires doing research that yields information to build models or theory that can explain and predict relevant outcomes of the activities that comprise the field. Those who teach past practice are sooner or later replaced by teacher-researchers who not only transfer existing information and practices, but also generate and transfer new knowledge.
The new knowledge that scholarly researchers produce leads to theory and generalizations, which in turn lead to increasingly rapid development of sophisticated practice (usually a few years later), followed by more sophisticated teacher-scholars who in turn produce an increased volume of scholarly research â a synergistic process. In a mature professional discipline, research supports teaching. Teaching and research both support practice.
The evolution of international advertising practice, teaching, and research has begun to follow this traditional pattern. In the USA export or international advertising emerged as an important business activity in the early 1900s. It was planned and executed on the basis of judgment and accumulated practical experience. As it became more important economically and socially after World War II, teachers at colleges, institutes, and universities in the 1960s and 1970s began to see the need for systematic inquiry to: (a) explain the nature of international advertising practice and the process and effects of international advertising, and (b) study the many functional relationships among the factors that make it possible to predict when and under what circumstances international advertising is effective in accomplishing its objectives. Teachers and researchers also became increasingly interested in the economic and social effects of advertising, and more recently those effects of international advertising.
In the early development of an academic discipline it is necessary to define and categorize the many components of it. To a great extent international advertising is still in that stage. Next, theory evolves from research as the functional relationships between the variables in these categories are specified, not only in words but also quantitatively. To a limited extent international advertising has advanced to this stage, and is gradually becoming a mature discipline.
Since much of the research relevant to international advertising was published in the USA, this chapter focuses primarily thereon. It also includes notable perspectives from research conducted in other nations.
International Advertising Practice and Knowledge
Information in the next few pages explains the development of international advertising practice and its importance as a business activity. It illustrates why scholarly researchers became interested in investigating international advertising.
International advertising practice in the early 1900s to mid-century
Sellers likely engaged in some form of international advertising as long ago as trade was conducted across national boundaries. For our purposes, international advertising gradually became a significant business activity with the industrialization of the economies of countries in Europe and North America. Advertising is largely a phenomenon of developed economies in which companies sell branded products and services to ultimate consumers and to each other (business-to-business).
In the first 30 years of the 1900s, especially in the prosperous 1920s, increasing numbers of European and US manufacturers sold branded consumer or industrial products outside their home countries. Some of them utilized âexport advertising agencies.â Most such agencies depended primarily on foreign agencies (called affiliate, associate, or correspondent agencies) either to modify domestic campaigns or to initiate entirely new campaigns, whichever was appropriate from their clientsâ point of view. Export agencies and their foreign affiliates serving international industrial (now called business-to-business) advertisers tended to translate and adapt domestic advertising materials for use abroad. Agencies serving international advertisers of consumer products tended to depend somewhat more on foreign correspondent agencies to develop localized advertising campaigns appropriate for their particular markets (Miracle, 1966).
By 1930 a few large full-service US agencies such as J. Walter Thompson, McCann-Erickson, and N. W. Ayer had established offices outside the USA (Miracle, 1966). They provided international service for the brands their US clients exported or manufactured abroad. Because they were able to provide service to their clients both at home and abroad, they had a competitive advantage over export advertising agencies. This advantage in forthcoming decades contributed to the decline in business for export agencies. These US full-service agencies also served local clients in the countries in which they had offices (Miracle, 1966). Such local service occasionally led to obtaining some of the US or other international billings of those clients. Sometimes these foreign offices even served clients who employed a competitorâs advertising agency for their US or home-country advertising. Such complex arrangements made for an interesting advertising agency competitive climate, especially when clients wished to build a coherent brand image at home and abroad. It was sometimes important for each foreign office to work closely with the agencyâs other foreign offices in order to serve a client worldwide. At the same time, each foreign office had to operate with a great deal of autonomy when seeking new business from local clients.
International trade languished during the worldwide âgreat depressionâ of the 1930s and was further interrupted by World War II. The number of US international advertisers, their international sales, and the volume of their international advertising declined. In the late 1940s and 1950s some US manufacturers of industrial and consumer products revived and expanded their previous international operations. At the same time new international marketers began to sell abroad. Some of these US firms established manufacturing capabilities abroad. European companies, devastated by World War II, did the same a few years later. The process occurred also in a few other countries.
Pent-up demand developed in many countries after World War II, not only because of the disruptions of business during the war, but also because of the postwar development of new and better consumer and industrial products. Consequently, export sales grew rapidly in the years after the war with only minimal demand-stimulating activities such as advertising (Miracle, 1966).
Early twentieth-century industry knowledge of international advertising
In the first half of the twentieth century, marketing research techniques to provide information that was useful to make international marketing decisions were not well developed. Exporters depended mainly for needed market information on past experience, their sales force, channels of distribution, and secondary sources.
As the practice of export advertising evolved, leading practitioners wrote about their experience and offered advice to others. Articles on export advertising were published in trade publications such as Printerâs Ink and in several books, including Export Advertising, by Brown (1923), the advertising manager for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and Export Advertising Practice, by Propson (1923), the manager of sales promotion for Bausch and Lomb, and previously export advertising manager for Du Pont.
Eroglu and Eroglu (1994) reported that the first international marketing book published in the USA bore the title World Marketing (Collins, 1935). They observed that it was âdominated by the works of pioneers [e.g., sales executives] who had come from non-marketing backgrounds.â They wrote that Collinsâ book was descriptive and prescriptive; it explained and recommended a broad range of detailed marketing practices that were suitable for US companies âoperating in far-distant lands.â Two decades later, another book with many of the same practical characteristics, Modern International Commerce, was authored by Pratt (1956), professor of foreign trade at New York University. The content of these two book...
