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Introduction
Marketers are increasingly operating on a global basis (Pornpitakpan and Green, 2007), and effective advertising is key for overall success in the international market (Lepkowska-White et al. , 2003). In today's global environment, advertising images are increasingly used in multiple cultural arenas with little to no change in the image and even in the text accompanying the image (Harris, 1994; Mueller, 1991; Zhou and Belk, 2004). This appears to be particularly true with fashion advertising, which truly has a global reach (Wu, 2009), and many of the images provided by the advertisers tend to rely on Western ideals of fashion, beauty and even sexuality (Fowler, 2012; Ger and Belk, 1996; Hung et al. , 2007). As a result, different cultures are interconnected across geographic boundaries through mass media (Zhang, 2010).
In attempting to understand the reach of global advertising, Frith et al. (2005) proposed that researchers should not bring Western assumptions to examine advertising in non-Western cultures. As Phillips and McQuarrie (2010) argued, distinct consumer groups in differing cultures may respond to the advertisements in different ways. For instance, Americans may focus on the independence and rebelliousness exhibited in an advertisement (Maynard and Taylor, 1999), while Chinese may focus on the more holistic or collective features in the advertisement (Cui et al. , 2013), even though they are, as in the opening example, the same advertisements. Additionally, even different social groups within the same cultures may view the advertisements differently (Englis et al. , 1994) from a global perspective.
Research has concluded that cultural/historical orientation has an effect on the performance of global advertising in international markets (LaRoche et al. , 2001; Lepkowska-White et al. , 2003; Taylor et al. , 1997). The effectiveness of advertising depends on whether advertisement appeals are relevant to consumers (Lepkowska-White et al. , 2003). As such, research on the interaction between advertising and viewers is essential to observe the ongoing effect of globalization in an advertising context.
In continuing this stream of research, this study is designed to further develop our understanding of the cultural differences that exist between Western and Eastern cultures, specifically the USA and China, in the age of globalization. We expect to provide further insight into the "imperialism" of Western culture into Eastern countries...