Cultural Tailoring and Targeting of Messages: A Systematic Literature Review

Cultural targeting and tailoring are different, yet they remain intertwined in the literature inhibiting theory development and limiting the possibility of determining their effects. This preregistered systematic literature review describes these constructs and provides a framework for cultural tailoring with evidence from a review of 63 studies, published from 2010 to 2020, to characterize the processes, elements, and theories used in the existing literature. The results show that 86% of studies self-defined as cultural tailoring, but coding revealed relatively few tailoring studies (25%) with 31% including both tailoring and targeting elements. Most studies used outreach and consultation as processes for tailoring or targeting with participatory approaches used in a fifth of the studies. Surface-level features of message content were commonly used to tailor or target with deep-cultural-values found in only a quarter of the studies. We argue from theories of communication accommodation and persuasion that cultural tailoring or targeting may provide gains in attention, recall, or source evaluation.