6.1 Advertising and Media selection

Commercials included in the study are collected on the most popular general entertainment channels in the three countries. The channels included were terrestrial commercial channels, such as ITV and Channel 4 in the UK, as well as satellite and cable channels widely available, such as Sky One in the UK or RTL4 in the Netherlands. Equally included are the terrestrial public television channels in Germany (ARD and ZDF) and in the terrestrial not-for-profit channels in the Netherlands (Nederland 1, 2 and 3). The commercials were recorded during late 1999 and early 2000, and covered daytime, afternoon and evening advertising (10 am till around midnight), and covered all types of programming that were shown during this time without exception. This sampling should maximise the range of advertising available, and minimise the risk to select advertising aimed mainly for one consumer group.

All commercials, regardless of whether or not they advertised a domestic or foreign product or service were included in the study. However, commercials exclusively for a special event or promotion/contest were excluded, such as advertising focusing around the Euro 2000 Football championships. As all commercials recorded were broadcast on domestic channels, commercials destined for each target market were collected - regardless of whether or not they were standardised and equally used in other markets, or if they were localised.

6.2 Coding Instrument

In 1983 Pollay published a coding framework for measuring the cultural appeals in advertising, primarily as a response to the discussion over the cultural consequences of advertising values.

By reviewing a variety of advertising related literature, as well as literature and values research in other disciplines, such as psychology, sociology and the humanities, Pollay created a list of 42 cultural appeals most commonly found in advertising. He notes, that advertising does reflect a somewhat different set of values as can be found in a society in general (Pollay, 1986), a notion which he termed the "distorted mirror", and which has lead to a significant debate over the subject matter. Although American based and derived, the list was claimed to be relatively culture free. In the following years, the list was used successfully by Pollay (Belk and Pollay, 1985; Belk, Pollay, Bryce, 1985) to compare advertising values in Japanese and US commercials. The appeals were also successfully used in part by Caillat and Mueller (1996) and Cheng and Schweitzer (1996) for their research into advertising in the UK, US and China. Albers-Miller and Gelb (1996) used 30 of the 42 appeals successfully in their study of advertising in 11 countries. In 1997 Cheng tested the frequency of appeals used in Chinese television advertising using the full list of Pollay appeals. Cheng concludes, that Pollay's framework "for advertising in North America is applicable to the Chinese context". Table 1 gives an overview over the appeals Pollay identified, and compared to those used in the Cheng and Schweitzer study (1996).

Pollay's list of advertising appeals is, in my view, unique in two aspects, which also make it extremely useful to use it in this context:

• The list is a comprehensive, and possibly complete, list of possible appeals that can be used. By being derived from previous studies, and conclusively verified independently, it may help to avoid the pitfall of not asking the "right" question or missing out on possible appeals.
• The list has been successfully used in intercultural research, and has been validated as been applicable even outside the Western advertising culture.

Other, more technical or strategic classification methods for advertising, such as Berkman & Gilson's Advertising Strategies, Simon's Creative Strategies (1971) and the Resnick-Stern Information Content Classification System (1981) may be useful for a later, more complete and descriptive analysis of the advertising practices in selected product categories during the PhD stage.

6.3 Coding Procedure

In order to maximise the efficiency of coding, as well as reduce the possibility of culture-linked misunderstandings all commercials were coded by coders that were born and raised in the country for which they coded the commercials, as well as reside there. Two coders in each country were asked to code the commercials independently. All coders are in their late 20s, and hold a university degree.

Each coder was trained in coding using the Pollay list, and all values were extensively discussed prior to doing. Some 50 commercials per country were "test" coded to familiarise the coders with the procedure, and to avoid complications and uncertainty using the coding instrument. All problems and uncertainties that arose during that stage were extensively discussed and cleared.

Each coder used a computer programme to code the commercials. They were presented with a page and a list of all Pollay appeals, with check-boxes next to the appeals to mark if the appeals were present. When holding the mouse over the appeal, a full description of the appeal was displayed as a guideline. There was no restriction on how many times a commercial was viewed, however the coders reported watching a commercial on average 2 times to complete the coding.

Intercoder reliability was as follows:

The levels that were obtained are clearly satisfactory intercoder reliabilities.