Hofstede, G. (1984). hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(3356907, 'f3c79a54-94fa-4875-95d8-58d85fe04dc8', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); St. Patricks Day, cable-knit wool sweaters, and lush, green rolling landscapes are what people Read More, How people communicate with one another varies wildly from culture to culture. Yet, relatively little is known about how affordances provided by social media platforms affect whether and how users express political opinions. Instead, they depend on the explicit code of the words and written rules to convey meaning. Low-context culture refers to a culture that communicates explicitly. High and Low Context High-Context and Low-Context Cultures - OUP Academic D.u{Tet&q3b Their communication is often indirect and requires a nuanced understanding, so outsiders might find it more difficult to enter their culture. (Citation2010) also investigated perceived complexity and liking of visual metaphors in advertising among participants from the same three countries. German Culture and Traditions - WorldAtlas Low Context Culture: Examples, Definition & Countries All Rights Reserved. Intercultural communication. Contrary to their expectations, French and Spanish participants did not perceive the visual metaphors to be easier to understand and did not like them more than the Dutch participants. What is an Interculturally Effective Person (IEP)? Fourth, in future empirical studies on the role of context theory in comprehension and persuasion, it may be worthwhile to vary the ways in which message comprehension is measured. B`%~Prj_G:r`m^1&[3PfX$]#b?UoZs43avM"M iwz|t&GEyea;Nu;Y;VNv3'k[dX@^kN+Vd4.?BBSKeA{x/ Uyg"] )1MQS z6lx{(7x*g6'lfD2q9up q61M 0.R The Influence of High-/Low-Context Cultu . https://doi.org/10.1080/08911762.2017.1296985. This dimension describes how every society has to maintain some links with its own past while dealing with the challenges of the present and future, and societies prioritise these two existential goals differently. As the ads depicted individuals or individuals in interaction, they chose to measure the participants' personal achievement (i.e., leadership) and affiliation (i.e., friendship) evoked by the images as measures of implicit meaning. This allows individuals of different generations to communicate through a shared set of values, which, in turn, provides stability to the culture. In this study, we follow their classification: Belgium is expected to be a higher-context culture than the Netherlands. In addition, personal preference for high/low context was measured on a 5-point scale with nine items taken from Richardson and Smith (Citation2007), which were selected on the basis of a principle component analysis run on data collected in a pretest (N = 30, age: M = 23.90, SD = 2.16). Hofstede Insights enables you to solve Intercultural and Organisational Culture challenges by utilising our effective and proven frameworks. Bill McDermott, the CEO of SAP, details his methodology when he began working with the German company, saying, When I present to a U.S. audience, I try to inspire them quickly, get them engaged right from the beginning. Routledge. It should be noted that the present study cannot rule out a potential role of the participants' study background, as we did not assess this in the questionnaire. Comfort with structure. The general terms "high context" and "low context" (popularized by Edward Hall) are used to describe broad-brush cultural differences between societies. Low-Context Cultures Communicators in low-context cultures (such as those in Germany, Scandinavia, and North America) convey their meaning exclusive of the context of a situation. aV )I~Wo='h6&XY+]fo)'M@y~. Fewer words can often lead to better understanding. Is the USA a high or low context culture? We cite peer reviewed academic articles wherever possible and reference our sources at the end of our articles. According to the information processing theory of McGuire (Citation1972), for instance, a persuasive communicative attempt is only expected to be successful if it passes a number of critical steps, including the comprehension of the message. Finally, it is expected that the effect predicted in H3 is mediated by participants' context-culture scores (H4): H3: Participants from a higher-context culture like ads with visual metaphors better than participants from a lower-context culture. These relationships are relevant to the hypotheses. [8Dpl>9v >a U=CF]U) S t f,\7aR"=k gYNweK/U$5WF_s.9l@hZU@ l!u]vN%%p'/+Ed>3Wxkpu5\ lYx0R f}8b An example of such a complex ad is an ad for liquid detergent that was used in Western Europe. Bluntness and candid opinions are a standard way to communicate in both the personal and professional lives of Germans. That is, people from a low-context culture are expected to have more difficulties in comprehending complex messages and, consequently, to appreciate them less than people from a high-context culture. Increased complexity in advertising has been found to affect consumers' comprehension and liking of ads (e.g., Lagerwerf & Meijers, Citation2008; McQuarrie & Mick, Citation1999; Van Mulken, Van Hooft, & Nederstigt, Citation2014). Wurtz found something similar while analyzing website design. This post is a part of the series where I'd like to share some of my cross-cultural experiences and stories. A polite nod accompanied by a firm handshake is a common greeting, both in a business as well as social context; eye contact is made and held during a face-to-face conversation. There is an aversion to letting the future take its course. In the first half of the theoretical framework, we will outline the role of comprehension in the persuasion process in general, and in the case of complex advertisements in particular. 6e`pS"\wFR-O/XXdg%8a'Gz:A9=w5G>+1 ) Cultures can, therefore, be described as Indulgent or Restrained. McQuarrie & Mick, Citation2003, Citation2009), jargon (cf. It seems straightforward that, when communicating with their target audience in different cultures, companies want to clearly mention the benefits of their products in order to maximize their impact (see Wyer & Shrum, Citation2015). Le Pair and Van Mulken (Citation2008, p. 289) stress that their choice to relate the findings on ad liking to participants' context culture is a tentative explanation, and Callow and Schiffman (Citation2002, p. 274) acknowledge, It would also be advantageous to measure context at an individualas opposed to a culturallevel.. In two studies, they observed that participants' attitudes towards the product were affected by the source's expertise when the message was difficult to understand. An in-depth understanding of cultural norms is not required because the communication is explicit. For the sake of completeness, Figure2 displays the (un)standardized coefficients of the discussed relationships in the model. An example of an ad with a juxtaposition metaphor is the one for Land Rover, which shows three objects crossing a large river: two hippos and one Land Rover (with the implicature that the vehicle is able to cross that river as smoothly as the two animals). That is, not only were ads with more complex metaphors better liked than ads with less complex metaphors, but ads with too complex metaphors were liked less than ads with less complex metaphors (Phillips, Citation2000; Van Mulken etal., Citation2014). Localization Strategy Guide - The Cultural Dimensions of Germany These countries were selected because they are similar in many respects, but differ in context culture. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Cardon (Citation2008, p. 400), for instance, noted, Studies that use contexting as an explanatory framework for cross-cultural variation almost invariably accept the contexting continuum, neglecting to measure participants' context scores. Information has to be explicit and detailed for the message to be conveyed without distortion. Restrained Emotions are discredited as unprofessional; in a business context, trust and credibility are developed through suppression of emotions; tendency to be more emotionally expressive with family and friends, particularly in southern Germany. Countries such as Germany and Sweden are also low context while Japan and China are high context. This conservative, reasoned approach to problems that arise gives Germany the ability to change quickly to local and global situations. This result supported H3 (see the lower part of Figure2). A prototypical message component that results in complex messages is the use of metaphors. and the German culture is referred to low context and status-oriented cultures [Kulikova, 2006; Kotthoff, 2003; Gnther, 2002; Khorrami . Status is often shown, especially by cars, watches and technical devices. Reviewing the use of Hall's high-/low-context concept, Culture, attitudes, and media patterns in China, Taiwan, and the U.S.: Balancing standardization and localization decisions, Openness in metaphorical and straightforward advertisements, Points of view and pieces of time: A taxonomy of image attributes, Perceived complexity and appreciation of visual metaphors by consumers with different cultural backgrounds, The effects of syntactic complexity on advertising persuasiveness, Toward a new generation of cross-cultural research, Attitude change: The information-processing paradigm, Figures of rhetoric in advertising language, Visual rhetoric in advertising: Text-interpretive, experimental and reader-response analyses, Visual and verbal rhetorical figures under directed processing versus incidental exposure to advertising, A laboratory study of the effect of verbal rhetoric versus repetition when consumers are not directed to process advertising, Thinking into it: Consumer interpretation of complex advertising images, The impact of verbal anchoring on consumer response to image ads, Beyond visual metaphor: A new typology of visual rhetoric in advertising, Comprehension's role in persuasion: The case of its moderating effect on persuasive impact of source cues, The influence of high/low-context culture and power distance on choice of communication media: Students' media choice to communicate with professors in Japan and America, Mediation analysis in social psychology: Current practices and new recommendations, Spectacular vernacular: Literacy and commercial culture in the postmodern age, The impact of perceived message complexity and need for cognition on information processing and attitudes, Hofstede's dimensions of culture in international marketing studies, The pun in advertising: A pragmatic approach, Examining the impact of culture's consequences: A three-decade, multilevel, meta-analytical review of Hofstede's cultural value dimensions, Half a century of measuring culture: Review of approaches, challenges, and limitations based on the analysis of 121 instruments for quantifying culture, The occurrence and effects of verbal and visual anchoring of tropes on the perceived comprehensibility and liking of TV commercials, The impact of perceived complexity, deviation and comprehension on the appreciation of visual metaphor in advertising across three European countries, Finding the tipping point: Visual metaphor and conceptual complexity in advertising, The role of comprehension processes in communication and persuasion, Puffery in advertisements: The effects of media context, communication norms, and consumer knowledge. The mean scores for perceived complexity and ad liking were submitted to regression analyses for the direct effect of nationality on perceived complexity (H1) and ad liking (H3). H4: Participants' personal context scores mediate the effect of nationality on ad liking. In total, 289 students participated in this comparative survey-based study. A 2005 study by Elizabeth Wurtz demonstrates how cultural differences shape marketing and advertising. Put it in writing. In communication theories, the important role of comprehension has been acknowledged. Hugs and embraces are common in a social context; the occasional pat on the back (from the older superior to the younger subordinate) may be seen in a work environment. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. EJ]?SGfekI NTj\*5~RGzN%#QeOJkLPvYwA9xCk9?FM~0xtCxjg-G3'Uw?g`#IcN!Yr%{U4`8sDUTEP^ Honesty is also valued highly because German communication as a whole is incredibly low-context. Hall, E. T. (1976). This morning on Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday, nurses union leader Pat Cullen attacked the government over its failure to give RCN members a decent pay rise as Transport Secretary Mark Harper . It can imply understanding or agreement, but it can also mean their conversea lack of certainty. On the one hand, the results demonstrated that the more complex, implicit ad was better liked than the less complex, explicit ad; on the other, the results demonstrated that the too complex ad without a headline was liked less than the implicit ad. The context theory framework has been adopted in cultural studies to a large extent; Cardon (Citation2008), for instance, reviewed 244 articles. The Belgian participants had a higher context score (M = 3.07, SD = 0.49, n = 174) than the Dutch participants (M = 2.92, SD = 0.52, n =.115). Intercultural Business Communication by Confederation College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. Robin Bargheon on Twitter First, it is expected that participants from a higher-context culture will like the complex ad better than participants from a lower-context culture (H3). Beyond these kinds of replications, we suggest five directions for future investigations to further examine how context theory affects comprehension and persuasion in advertising and communication. Studies mainly have accepted Hall's theoretical classification of high- and low-context cultures without attempts to substantiate it empirically (Kittler etal., Citation2011). Co-determination rights are comparatively extensive and have to be taken into account by the management. It will examine whether it is indeed people's individual context score that affects the degree of comprehension and liking of complex messages. More recent persuasion models, such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, Citation1986) and the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM; Chaiken, Citation1987), have nuanced the role of comprehension. Due to this shared understanding, high-context cultures are slightly more informal. Germany is among the uncertainty avoidant countries (65); the score is on the high end, so there is a slight preference for Uncertainty Avoidance. Chapter 2 sets the theoretical background on leadership styles, and the differentiation between high- and low-context . The German language: high, low and standard German & its dialects As a result, much is taken for granted. Learn more about our academic and editorial standards. Potential participants were invited to take part in an online study. Consensus-finding; thorough decision-making phase is followed by swift implementation phase. On the basis of his review of studies on context theory, one of Cardon's (Citation2008, p. 423) concluding remarks was about this measurement issue: [F]uture research must employ rigorously developed measures. Social media in Germany is used by only 50 percent of the populationdrastically lower than many countries in Europe. Germans tend to make a strict distinction between work and social life; therefore expect little small talk in a business context. Communication is driven by cultural differences - MSU Extension Depending on the amount of information conveyed, cultures are classified as being high-context and low-context. They show an ability to adapt traditions easily to changed conditions, a strong propensity to save and invest, thriftiness, and perseverance in achieving results. Meaning depends on what is said- the literal content of the message- rather than how it is said. In high-context cultures (such as those in Japan, China, and Arab countries), the listener is already contexted and does not need to be given much background information[3]. For instance, See, Petty, and Evans (Citation2009) showed, in two studies, that people with a high need for cognition (who have a tendency to appreciate undertaking cognitive activities) were more motivated to process a complex rather than a simple message, and that people with a low need for cognition were more motivated to process a simple instead of a complex message. This, in turn, may make employers (particularly of smaller companies) very cautious and selective when hiring people. Germanys high score of 83 indicates that it is a pragmatic country. In other words, people communicate explicitly in low-context cultures. Building cultural competence (pp. Establishing relationships is an important part of communicating and interacting. It is understood that advertising messages targeted at audiences from different parts of the world do not always travel, which increases the need for adapting messages across the globe instead of standardizing them (e.g., Agrawal, Citation1995; Hornikx & O'Keefe, Citation2009; La Ferle, Edwards, & Lee, Citation2008). This is what the cultural standard "Direct communication style" is about. Also remember that although cultures are different from one another, no culture or cultural characteristic is better or worse than any other. In a business context, maintaining good relationships is second to getting the facts straight. They rely less on context & non-verbal cues and instead convey meaning more directly. For high-context cultures, language is a kind of social lubricant, easing and harmonizing relations that are defined according to a group or collectivist orientation where we rather than I is the key to identity. 312 0 obj <>stream Social media have become important environments for people to express and explore their political views. Instead of doubling down on the tried and true method of fossil fuel power, however, Germany has launched a massive clean-energy revolution. There are smaller communities and specific settings within national/linguistic cultures, and they may exhibit different communication patterns. The cultural context. G~D6cA>`E4SR_.H@vuc_FT_+ QY6PCz~Y*MLH4+p} The current study is the first empirical examination of context theory's role on message comprehension and appreciation. What is High Context Culture - Culture Matters Based on their detail-orientation, they tend to talk at great length. This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). It ranks third in both total exports and imports, and has a strong economy that is the largest in Europe and the 5th largest in the world. Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, Citation1995) has proven to be a successful approach for our understanding of the relationship between complexity and persuasion of such messages (cf. Two studies have empirically tested this expectation. Third, future research may invest in developing new and/or refining existing measures for high/low context (see Kim, Pan, & Park, Citation1998). In such circumstances, a less complex message is more effective. As expected by context theory, perceived complexity was lower for Belgian (a higher-context culture) than for Dutch participants (a lower-context culture), and participants' personal context culture score fully accounted for this difference. Intercultural Communication on Websites: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Websites from High-Context Cultures and Low-Context Cultures. Xu & Wyer, Citation2010), or foreign languages (cf. This work argues that message persistence (i.e., the temporal extent to which messages can be accessed by users) is a central affordance of many . Being autistic seem to be a lot easier in low context cultures (USA, Germany) and a lot harder in high context cultures (France, Japan)." [emailprotected], Technical Support This proved to be the case (F(1, 287) = 5.85, p =.016, 2 =.02). Need for Certainty Note: Comparison of low- and high-context cultures reprinted from Business communication: Process & product (p. 64) by M.E. While Germany isnt nearly as individualistic as some Western countries, it still scores high in the category. It relies on the straightforward use of language, without depending much on nonverbal cues. Germans tend to say their last name when answering the phone; e.g., Miller!. The complexity of a message can be the result of different message components (Lowrey, Citation2008), such as the difficulty of the words that are used (e.g., jargon or words from a foreign language), the syntax of the sentences (see Lowrey, Citation1998), or the length of the message. That is, recipients can be persuaded by a message even if they have not processed (and thus comprehended) that message. Germany. Anchor Press/Doubleday. The frequent use of complex ads can be best understood when these ads are conceptualized as messages with rhetorical figures, such as visual metaphors (Forceville, Citation1996; Phillips, Citation1997). Because directness may be thought of as disrespectful, discussions in high-context cultures can be circuitous, circling key issues rather than addressing them head-on. Guffey, D. Lowey, K. Rhodes, K., & P. Rogin. In his model, context refers to the stimuli, environment, or ambiance surrounding an event. Croucher, S., Bruno, A, McGrath, P, Adams, C, McGahan, C, Suits, A & Huckins, A. You can find his work on The Print, Live Wire, and YouTube. Without socialization we do not become human. High Context Culture: What Does It Mean and How to Adapt This dimension is defined as the extent to which people try to control their desires and impulses, based on the way they were raised. 3~_9!1JLW? WC "9T$8jKX@N>@\b}16#Q{E82J7gxQWk7&nr^VRjxL%%o7%os ^URt_aOewb,im_ole)hdc|LE<6%E4TEo o@ W Communication is among the most direct in the world following the ideal to be honest, even if it hurts and by this giving the counterpart a fair chance to learn from mistakes. Restrained Effectively communicating within this culture, therefore, requires messaging that is perceived as objective, professional, and efficient. Let us help you make your transition easy! Order Free Brochure. as explicit as possible. Measure your personal cultural preferences on Hofstedes 6D model, compare them to the culture of a selected country and become aware of cultural pitfalls. Germany has a relatively low score when it comes to indulgence, meaning the country is restrained in nature. Emotions are discredited as unprofessional; in a business context, trust and credibility are developed through suppression of emotions; tendency to be more emotionally expressive with family and friends, particularly in southern Germany.
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