Affective contents of cross-cultural audiovisual experience

Abstract

Audiovisual presentation of a product has a direct impact on the mental representation of an individual when interacting with a product. Companies produce audiovisual contents that can be used in different cultural environments as a way of having broader impact at a cheaper cost. But do video contents have the same impact in different countries? We addressed this question by using images and videos of Iittala products (Finnish design) with the goal of finding whether participants from two countries, Finland and Spain, appraised the designs similarly. We performed an experiment in which participants interacted with three audiovisual products depicting images/videos of the brand design. Through content analysis, we identified four main categories that defined the representation of the product and their relative weight depending on nationality and the type of presentation (image/video). The results indicate common elements of audiovisual product that affects viewers of two different countries.