A Case Study on McDonald’s Advertisements from the Perspective of Intercultural Communication

It is accepted that domestic advertisements cannot be simply translated and then put in other countries and regions directly since cultural differences and misunderstandings are common in intercultural communication. Under the guidance of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension Theory, this paper, taking McDonald’s advertisements as examples, aims at analyzing why does McDonald’s put different media advertisements in different countries and regions and how Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension assists the design of advertisements? With qualitative content analysis, we find that McDonald’s usually employs elements related to “we” such as family or friendship to design advertisements for cultures characterized by collectivism. Secondly, different dimensions would be elaborated in one advertisement at the same time. Besides, subcultural factors such as homosexuality or street dance are common in advertisements launched in feminine societies. Lastly, leisure time or entertainment is usually taken to design advertisements by McDonald’s for short-term orientated countries and regions.