Beyond Culture: A Proposal for Agent-Based Content Analyses of International Advertisements

This paper argues for a paradigmatic shift away from the current cultural framework that dominates content analyses of international advertisements. It proposes a new framework that recognizes the direct influence of agents such as the advertiser/agency, the consumer, and the regulator on international advertising. This agent-based approach aims to link content analysis to other areas of advertising and consumer research, and investigate the interaction between the characteristics of these agents and international advertising content. This way, content analysis serves as an exploratory tool to generate hypotheses and facilitate other forms of analysis so that more actionable results can be obtained.