Title: Cultural appeals in Indian TV commercials

Authors: Amarendra Kumar Dash

Addresses: Department of English, Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, Nuzvid, Krishna District, Andhra Pradesh – 521202, India

Abstract: TV advertisers propel the advertisements with various psychological triggers called 'appeals' to persuade the audiences and consumers. When such consumption appeals are put in sync with the cultural values of the consumers, they are called 'cultural appeals'. The appeals are embedded in the discursive structure of the commercials. This study undertakes a content analysis of the values, visuals, and auditory corpus of 538 Indian TV commercials to find out the variations in the use of global, local, and glocal cultural appeals in them. It is found that glocal cultural appeals are used more frequently followed by global cultural appeals whereas the use of local cultural appeals is very negligible. Across commercials from foreign, Indian, and joint-venture companies, the most prominent feature in the sample commercials is Glocal 1, i.e., glocalisation with dominant global cultural elements. The study reveals the global face of the global-local fusion in India by deciphering the asymmetrical cultural blend that characterises contemporary Indian TVCs.

Keywords: glocalisation; cultural appeals; Indian TV commercials; brand origin; product categories; asymmetrical blend.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICBM.2021.119741

International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 2021 Vol.24 No.3, pp.386 - 403

Received: 19 May 2020
Accepted: 28 Oct 2020
Published online: 17 Dec 2021 *

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