The ad promotes price cuts by the company over the upcoming long weekend.

A car dealer has fired back at critics who questioned the wisdom of it using Maori culture in an advertisement to promote its Waitangi Day sale.

2 Cheap Cars brand manager Jared Donkin admitted its advert, which shows a Pakeha girl dressed in a kapa haka costume and swinging a poi, was "a bit tacky".

But he said the firm wasn't trying to cause controversy and questioned why it was wrong for a Pakeha girl to "join in with Maori culture".

Donkin said 2 Cheap Cars had sought out the views of "Maori staff, family and outsiders" and they believed it was the girl's "skin colour that people are getting tied up about".

The video post on Facebook has sparked some criticism from viewers.

Cushla Tangaere-Manuel posted: "This is sooooo WTF...tokenism much" while Rose Posie said: "Taking the piss and clearly uneducated".

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Ann-Marie Kennedy a senior lecturer in marketing at Auckland University of Technology's business school, said the company was obviously using indigenous intellectual property – from the costume to the poi – to make money without necessarily giving anything back to the culture it took it from.

The issue was the same whether the company used a girl who looked Maori or non-Maori, she said.

"It's hard to judge [people's ethnicity] but the true issue is that they're using something that's culturally sacred to sell things," Kennedy said.

"You can see they had good intentions but I don't think it'll be too effective."

However, there was also support for the car firm.

Glo Taek Manley posted: "I like it! Mostly because the intention you had was good & well meaning. We must share our culture, as we do have a shared heritage. Kia ora 2 Cheap Cars."

Donkin said the girl in the advert was born in New Zealand.

"We know kapa haka is performed in lots of schools around New Zealand and it is not unusual to see Pakeha girls or other cultures in the performance dressed in kapa haka costume with poi, is it discrimination for them to do so?

"Saying that we are using intellectual property without giving anything back is like saying anyone who is Pakeha or not Maori is required to pay a koha anytime we refer, wear or use anything Maori related," he said.