Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, Volume 31, Number 1 (Spring 2009). Hatzithomas Leonidas is a Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing in the Department of Business Administration, School of Economics at Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki. (email: leonidasnoe@yahoo.com) Boutsouki Christina (Ph.D., Where ??) is a Lecturer in Marketing in the Department of Business Administration, School of Economics at Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki. (email: ??) Zotos Yorgos (Ph.D., where ??) is a Professor in Marketing in the Department of Business Administration, School of Economics at Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki. (email: ??) The Effects of Culture and Product Type on the Use of Humor in Greek TV Advertising: An Application of Speck’s Humorous Message Taxonomy Hatzithomas Leonidas, Boutsouki Christina, and Zotos Yorgos The present study attempts to add to the growing literature regarding humorous advertising in high context environments such as Greece and the other Mediterranean countries. It content analyzes 447 Greek TV commercials in order to identify the relationship between humor and the nature of products. In this attempt, Speck’s humorous message taxonomy (1991) and Rossiter & Percy’s brand attitude grid, provide the theoretical framework for the analysis. The various humor types and processes described by Speck’s taxonomy are linked to consumer involvement and motivation. The study analyzes the use of humor, and examines the applicability of the humorous message taxonomy in Greek TV advertising based on cross-cultural analysis between Greece and the USA as recorded in Speck’s original study in 1991 (the only study that employs the same theoretical framework for the analysis of humorous TV advertising). Introduction–Purpose of the Study Humor is panhuman (Ziv 1988), it is present in both tribal and industrialized societies (Apte 1985). As Berger (1987, p. 6) states: “Humor is...all pervasive; we don’t know of any culture where people don’t have a sense of humor, and in contemporary societies, it is found every- where—in film, on television, in books and newspapers, in our conversations, and in graffiti.” However, consum- ers’ preference in humorous content varies among different countries, mainly due to the social condi- tions and restrictions prevailing in each country (Nevo et al. 2001). Humor is one of the most commonly used emo- tional appeals in advertising. An overview of humor- ous advertising in the USA for example, reports usage rates that range between 11% and 24% of the total TV commercials (Beard 2005). Speck’s (1991) earlier study though, reports significantly higher percentages (51%) of TV ads that incorporate some type of humor. As a communication strategy, humor constitutes the com- mon denominator and the key success factor for a number of global advertising strategies. For instance, in “Advertising Age Best Ads 2000 Competition,” 23 out of 32 award winning TV commercials were hu- morous (Vagnoni 2001). A survey of the favorite ra- dio ads in the UK indicated that highly humorous ads attracted the audience’s attention and preference (Anonymous 2002). The role of humor in advertising has been widely discussed. There are three main streams of research in the area. The first group of studies focuses on the source and the message factors, namely the related- ness between humor elements and message elements (Flaherty et al. 2004; Speck 1991). The second stream of studies concentrates on situational factors, such as the program context (Furnham et al. 1998; Gunter et al. 2002; Perry et al. 1997). Finally, a number of re- search papers have examined the role of the advertis- ing audience’s individual factors, for instance, the effect of need for cognition (Cline et al. 2003), need for levity (Cline and Kellaris 1999) and affect intensity (Geuens and De Pelsmacker 1999). Scant research has focused on the ways in which the humorous content varies across cultures (Alden et al. 1993). The present study further elaborates on the issue of humorousness in a high context environment such as Greece as opposed to a low context environ-