The Handbook of International Advertising Research

8

Magazines and International Advertising

Katherine Frith and Kavita Karan

Magazines as Global Media

The past few decades have seen an unprecedented growth in magazines worldwide. Western magazines like Cosmopolitan, Elle, Vogue, Maxim, and Seventeen now have “local country” editions around the world. In addition, media liberalization combined with rising literacy rates and growing income levels in many parts of the world has resulted in a burgeoning number of local magazines. This growth means that advertising researchers now have a wide and varied assortment of magazines available in which to study advertising.

The internationalization of magazines is not a new phenomenon. Harper’s Bazaar, a US magazine, began publishing a UK edition as early as 1929 (Hafstrand, 1995) and Elle, a European-based women’s magazine, expanded into Japan in the late 1960s. However, as Herman and McChesney (1997) note, “the establishment of an integrated global media market only began in earnest in the late 1980s and did not reach its full potential until the 1990s” (p. 10). In terms of international expansion, Elle magazine, owned by the French publishing giant Hachette Filipacchi, has been most aggressive in the last 20 years. Hachette Filipacchi first launched Elle in 1945 and it now prints 36 special country editions – including editions in the local languages of India, Thailand, China, and Korea – selling more than 60 million copies a year. It was the first international fashion monthly on newsstands ...