Abstract
With the gamut of advertisements endorsed in every media possible, advertisers try aggressively to grab the attention of their viewers and promote their product and/or brand and this need gave rise to Shock Advertising. Shock advertising has been around for years now, however it's still new to a lot of cultures. Previous studies have had mixed findings with regards to its effectiveness, but culture has played a significant role in defining the efficacy of shock advertisements. This calls for a need to explore other interactions between different types of shock appeals and culture to identify the relationship, if any. The research focuses on the effectiveness of shock advertising on four outcome variables, i.e. Memory Recall, Level of Shock, Norm Violation and Persuasiveness across two different cultures (viz. Indian and Chinese Taiwanese). An empirical study was conducted on respondents from both the cultures to examine how they react to different shock appeals and the findings were hypothesized on the basis of Hofstede’s cultural traits of Individualism vs. Collectivism. The conclusion of the study was strikingly different from the expectation as it settled that an Individualistic culture (Indian) was more unaccepting and shocked towards the Collectivistic culture (Chinese Taiwanese). The study opens opportunities for advertisers to rethink about the cultural norms and understand the Chinese Taiwanese and Indian cultural setting to approach the markets with even unconventional shock advertising.