CONTEXT CULTURE IN ADVERTISING: A CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF SEPHORA’S US AND INDONESIA OFFICIAL INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS

Abstrak

The notion of adapting a marketing strategy to fit the target audience's culture has been acknowledged for decades. However, in social media, cultural homogeneity has become more apparent that people on the internet communicate similarly. This study examined how a multinational company, Sephora, markets its products by analyzing the communication style of the top 15 most-liked posts in the US and Indonesia Instagram accounts. Using Hall’s (1976) context theory as the analytical framework, this study found that both accounts used a communication style that contradicted each country’s prominent culture in their most-liked posts, with the US having more high-context-styled posts and Indonesia with low-context posts. The findings challenged the notion and proved that following Hall’s dichotomy appears to be no longer accurate as these posts could still gather high engagement despite being in a different communication style.