Luxury brands do not glitter equally for everyone

Previous studies indicate that Westerners and non-Westerners vary in terms of culture and in the degree of focus on objects and the background of advertisings. In this study, the divergences in the perceptions of advertisements for luxury cars are tested by using eye-tracking technology. Going beyond previous studies that considered the time spent on the observations, we use a mixed-methods approach to complement experimental results with survey data. As expected, Europeans pay more attention to the object (i.e., luxury product) in the advertising compared to Asians. In contrast, Asians focus more on the background of the stimuli. Seizing these results, practitioners will be able to design better-targeted advertising for luxury brands based on whether the audience is Asian or Western. The study also shows how an advertiser distracts the attention of the target group from the object (product) by adding focal objects on the sides.