Proceedings of 5th Annual American Business Research Conference
6 - 7 June, 2013, Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel, NY, USA, ISBN: 978-1-922069-24-5
TVs Advertising Appeals a Reflection of Arab Cultural
Values: Comparison of U.S. and Arab World
Najah Al Jarrah and Sami Shahin
The facts are that entering a new region requires a
thorough understanding of the cultural differences in
consideration. A vast change in cultural values and
advertising practices has been sweeping the Arab world.
This change is associated with an increase in
materialization, appearances and the values used in
advertisements. Concurrently, sociocultural values are
changing as a result as well. This study investigates the
content of Arab and American television advertisements.
We found that where nudity and sex are concerned,
Arab advertisements will use this appeal more than
American advertisements. More similarities than
differences were found among the two regions in
question. For example, pleasure, luxury, beauty, wealth,
health and happiness were the majority of the appeals
used in both American and Arab television
advertisements.
JEL Codes: 524
__________________________________________________________
*Dr. Najah Al Jarrah, Department of Marketing, Alliant International University, CA, USA.
Email: najah89@yahoo.com
** Dr. Sami Shahin, Department of Mathematics, Southwest Minnesota State University, MN, USA.
Email: sami.shahin@smsu.edu