Malaysia Chinese and nudity in advertising

Abstract

This paper sets out to extend current knowledge on reactions towards different level of nudity in advertisement by Malaysian Chinese. It tests various reactions from Malaysian Chinese based on relevant models in the communication and advertising literature. The paper utilizes questionnaires based on a set of different level of nudity in advertisement. The advertisement used was of a semi nude male, semi nude female and an advertisement featuring a Champagne Cooler(non-human element as comparison material). Data collected was analyzed using Means and Anova. Finding indicates that Malaysian Chinese male respondents reacted favorably towards advertisements featuring the semi nude female. Malaysian Chinese female respondents reacted favorably towards advertisement featuring semi nude male and both gender reacted less favorably and similarly towards the Champagne Cooler advertisement. Main limitation for this research is that the study used three different advertisements, but each respondent saw only one. Thus there was no direct comparison by each individual. Implications for business are discussed in the paper.