A Cross-cultural Study on Consumers’ Attitudes toward Web Advertising : A Case of Swedish and Japanese Consumers

Abstract: This research intended to clarify differences in attitudes toward Web advertising between consumers form culturally different countries. On that account, this research is conducted within the context of Japan and Sweden, which are countries that can be considered as highly different culturally. Through online questionnaires, data were collected from 275 respondents, 160 Japanese and 115 Swedish consumers. Their attitudes toward Web advertising were measured and then compared based on Pollay and Mittal’s (1993) seven-belief factors – product information, hedonic, social role and image, good for the economy, materialism, falsity, and value corruption – as these factors have been argued to highly relate to consumers’ attitudes toward Web advertising. Consequently questionnaire results were analyzed in a relation to the existing cultural studies. Finally, the study concludes that there was no evidence that prove differences between Japanese and Swedish consumers neither in their overall attitudes toward Web advertising nor in four of the belief factors: product information, hedonic, good for the economy, and materialism. However, distinctive differences were found in social role and image factor and value corruption factor between them. Hence, the research indicates that Japanese and Swedish consumers’ overall attitudes toward Web advertising do not greatly differ, but they prone to place their priorities on Web advertising in somewhat different manners.