Cultural Influences on International Marketing

1. Cultural Influences on International Marketing Dana-Nicoleta Lascu Chapter 5

2. Chapter Objectives • Identify the elements of culture and examine how they affect marketing practices around the world • Describe national and regional character based on dimensions such as time orientation, business practices, gift giving, socializing, gender roles, and materialism • Discuss cultural variability in terms of the Hofstede dimensions with appropriate examples and address cultural change in a marketing context • Address the self-reference criterion and ethnocentrism and describe how they impeded mutual understanding and cooperation, with direct negative effects on marketing practices • Describe the global consumer culture as it manifests itself around the world

3. The Importance of Understanding • Many companies find that their new foreign firm is about to collapse because they have failed to learn that country’s customs, cultures, and laws • Two out of every three U.S. executives sent to Saudi Arabia are promptly repatriated due to difficulties in adapting to the local culture • The costs associated with premature returns (repatriation) negatively affects the bottom-line of international companies

4. Culture Defined • A continuously changing totality of learned and shared meanings, rituals, norms, and traditions among the members of an organization or society. • Ecology • Social Structure • Ideology

5. Elements of Culture • Spoken/Written Language • Differences in meaning in different countries which share the same language • Dealing with multiple dialects • High costs of translation • High costs of translation blunders

6. Elements of Culture • Nonverbal communication • Proxemics • Postures • Orientations • Oculesics • Chronemics • Haptics • Kinesics • Paralinguistics • Appearances • Olfactions

7. High vs. Low Context Cultures • Low-Context cultures: What is said is precisely what is meant • High-Context cultures: The context of the message— the message source, his or her standing in society or in the negotiating group, level of expertise, tone of voice, and body language—are all meaningful

8. Religion and Its Impact on Marketing Practice • Protestant Religion – stresses hard work and frugality • Judaism– stresses education and development • Islam– focus on rules for social interaction • Hinduism– encourages family orientation and dictates strict dietary constraints • Buddhism– stresses sufferance and avoidance of worldly desires

9. Religion • Business days • Gender roles • Gift giving • Marketing practices

10. Cultural Values • Enduring beliefs about a specific mode of conduct or desirable end-state • Guide the selection or evaluation of behavior • Are ordered by importance in relation to one another to form a system of value priorities

11. Cultural Values • Enculturation Process by which individuals learn the beliefs and behaviors endorsed by one’s own culture • Acculturation Learning a new culture • Assimilation Maintenance of the new culture, and resistance to new cultures and to one’s old culture

12. Cultural Norms • Norms are derived from values and defined as rules that dictate what is right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable • Imperative • What an outsider must or must not do • Exclusive • What locals may do but an outsider cannot • Adiaphora • What an outsider may or may not do

13. National/Regional Character • Time Orientation • Business Hours • Gift Giving • Socializing • Gender Roles • Status Concern and Materialism • Other – for example, access (transportation by bicycle, personal automobile, public transportation

14. Cultural Variability • Power Distance • Uncertainty Avoidance • Masculinity Versus Femininity • Individualism Versus Collectivism

15. Cultural Change & Marketing Marketers need to identify the symbolic elements that are important to a market segment and use them effectively in creating the marketing mix. In an advertisement, if the above are perceived as faces, censors might erase them; if they are perceived as a vase, they would not be altered.

16. Obstacles to Cultural Understanding • Ethnocentrism • A related belief that a particular culture is superior to another and that strategies that are used in the home country will work just as well abroad. • The Self-Reference Criterion: • The unconscious reference to one’s own value system

17. Dealing with the Self-Reference Criterion • Define the marketing goal in terms of one’s home country’s cultural traits, norms, and values • Define the marketing goal in terms of the host country’s cultural traits, norms, and values • Isolate the self-reference criterion influence and evaluate it to understand how it affects the marketing issue • Solve the marketing problem based solely on the unique conditions of the host country.

18. Global Consumer Culture • Shared consumption-related symbols and activities that are meaningful to segments • Often attributed to the diffusion of entertainment from the US to the rest of the world

19. Global Consumer Culture Trends • Proliferation of transnational firms and the related globalized capitalism • Global brands • Globalized consumerism and the desire for material possessions • Homogenization of global consumption

20. Chapter Summary • Identified elements of culture and examined how they affect marketing practices • Described national and regional character and cultural variability worldwide • Discussed impediments to mutual understanding and cooperation • Analyzed the global consumer culture • Examined the depth and effect of different cultural influences on consumer behavior