Culture is in the eye of the beholder: using metaphoric representations of cultural values to enhance consumer digital engagement

Drawing on the conceptual metaphor theory and national cultural values (masculinity and power distance), a field experiment was conducted to promote an experiential product to 4,108 consumers in the UK and in the US. The research contributions are novel in three ways: first, the digital advertising literature is extended into the international business domain by using metaphoric representations of cultural values; second, consumer digital engagement is examined through a lens of cultural values; and third, a real digital product and actual consumer data were used to conduct a field experiment with real-time data collected across two countries. The findings suggest that consumers do not automatically engage with metaphors that are aligned with their cultural values, but marketers can increase consumer digital engagement by using metaphors to remind consumers of their cultural values. This study has implications in terms of effective digital advertisement designs that engage consumers in different cultural contexts.