My research focuses on the influence of culture on communication, consumer behavior and advertising. Consumers worldwide are not the same, and the differences in consumer behavior and communication between countries remain the same or increase. Cultural values are reflected in consumption, in communication and in media usage and in many domains of life consumer behavior across cultures is diverging instead of converging. This was one of the findings of my doctoral work of 2001 and has been confirmed by my later research. My dissertation titled Convergence and Divergence in Consumer Behavior. Consequences for Global Marketing and Advertising can be downloaded from the list of publications on this website. You can download it here.
My findings are integrated in three books and several articles. The latter can all be downloaded from the Articles page in this website. The books are used as textbooks at universities worldwide. The most recent one is the one titled Global Marketing and Advertising published in 2022. To professors who use the sixth edition of Global Marketing and Advertising or the third edition of Consumer Behavior and Culture as required text, Sage Publications offers a companion website with teaching materials: the original TV commercials and color print ads, used as illustrations in the book and other teaching aids.
