National Cultures, Values and Lifestyles Influencing Consumers' Perception towards Sexual Imagery in Alcohol Advertising: An Exploratory Study in the UK, Germany and Italy.

This exploratory study examines consumers' perception towards sexual imagery in alcohol advertising across national cultures and among men and women with different demographic and psychographic make-up in those cultures. This study addresses a very important gap found in the literature, namely the influence of consumers' psychographic characteristics as values and lifestyles on their overall perception towards sexual imagery in advertising. The study was conducted among consumers aged between 18 and 35 in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. Results indicate that Italians overall have higher acceptance levels towards sexual imagery portrayed in advertisements as compared to German and British consumers. Furthermore, varying levels of sexual imagery are much more appealing to men than women in all three countries. Consumers' values and lifestyles also played an important role in their overall perception. Moral values in particular are an indicator of acceptance levels of sexual content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]