Impact of Market Characteristics and Environments on Consumer Attitudes in the U.S. and Korea

This study analyzes market characteristics and consumer attitudes in countries with different economic growth models, which have contributed to the formation of different patterns in consumer market behaviors. To survey and categorize a country’s economy as either a market driven or a government-led economic model, we chose the U.S. and Korean markets, respectively, as a prototype of such models. While Korean consumers responded positively to hedonic advertising messages, US consumers responded positively to utilitarian and practical advertising messages in their relative market. This paper also finds the moderating effects of the consumers’product knowledge on their attitudes to advertising. Korean consumers showed high advertising attitudes and product attitudes toward the hedonic ads, and American consumers showed high advertising attitudes and product attitudes toward utilitarian ads. Consumers with low product knowledge showed higher product attitudes in hedonic advertising messages than in practical advertisements in both countries. The results suggest that consumers’ varying attitudes in different markets can be attributed to varying characteristics of economic-growth models. We recommend that global marketing strategies utilize the findings of this paper.