Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how Chinese and German consumers react to print advertisements that are potentially offensive. Design/methodology/approach – Using culture theories about information context, individualism and feminine consciousness, the paper hypothesizes...

Print and television advertisements for American products appearing in the USA, Germany and Japan are content analysed to explore factors influencing the usage of standardised versus specialised approaches in multinational advertising. Three factors are examined: market distance, product type,...