Lecture International marketing (14/e) - Chapter 4

International Marketi
ng
14th Edition
P h i l i p R. C a t e o r a
M a r y C. G i l l y
John L. Graham

Cultural Dynamics in
Assessing
Global Markets
Chapter 4
McGraw­Hill/Irwin
International Marketing 14/e

Copyright © 2009 by The McGraw­Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.


Discussed questions
• What is the culture?
• How you think culture affect Marketing?
• Social institutions (family, school, church, government,
company) affect marketing in a variety of ways. Discuss,
give examples?
• What are some particularly troublesome problems caused
by language in foreign marketing? Discuss.
• Cultures are dynamic. How do they change?
• Suppose you were requested to prepare a cultural analysis
for a potential market, what would you do? Outline the
steps and comment briefly on each.
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Cultural analysis – guideline
• Material Culture
– Technology – the techniques and “know-how” of producing material goods.
– Economics – the employment of capabilities and the results.

• Social Institutions
– Social organizations – family life, status, age.
– Education – literacy and intelligence and how informed the public is.
– Political structures – control over business.

• Man and the Universe
– Belief systems – how do these affect product and promotional acceptance?

• Aesthetics
– Graphic and plastic arts – degree of modernization.
– Folklore – superstition, tradition, etc.
– Music, drama, and the dance – promotional possibilities.
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What Should You Learn?
• The importance of culture to an international
marketer
• The origins and elements of culture
• The impact of cultural borrowing
• The strategy of planned change and its
consequences

4-4

Global Perspective Equities and eBay –
Culture Gets in the Way
• Culture deals with a group’s design for living
• The successful marketer clearly must be a
student of culture
• Markets are the result of the three-way
interaction of a marketer’s
– Economic conditions
– Efforts
– All other elements of culture

• The use of something new is the beginning of
cultural change
– The marketer becomes a change agent
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Definitions and Origins of Culture
• Traditional definition of culture
– Culture is the sum of the values, rituals, symbols, beliefs, and
thought processes that are learned, shared by a group of
people, and transmitted from generation to generation

• Humans make adaptations to changing
environments through innovation
• Individuals learn culture from social institutions
– Socialization (growing up)
– Acculturation (adjusting to a new culture)

– Application (decisions about consumption and production)

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Origins, Elements,
and Consequences of Culture
Exhibit 4.4

4-7


Geography
• Exercises a profound control
– Includes climate, topography, flora, fauna, and microbiology
– Influenced history, technology, economics, social institutions and
way of thinking

• The ideas of Jared Diamond and Philip Parker
– Jared Diamond
►

Historically innovations spread faster east to west than north to south

– Philip Parker
►
►
►

Reports strong correlations between latitude (climate) and per capita GDP

Empirical data supports climate’s apparent influence on workers’ wages
Explain social phenomena using principles of physiology

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Social Institutions
• Family
• Religion
• School
• The media
• Government
• Corporations

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Social Institutions
• Family
– Nepotism
– Role of extended family
– Favoritism of boys in some cultures

• Religion
– First institution infants are exposed to outside the home
– Impact of values systems
– Misunderstanding of beliefs

• School
– Affects all aspects of the culture, from economic development to

consumer behavior
– No country has been successful economically with less than 50%
literacy
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Social Institutions
• The media
– Media time has replaced family time
►
►

TV
Internet

• Government
– Influences the thinking and behaviors of adult citizens
►
►

Propaganda
Passage, promulgation, promotion, and enforce of laws

• Corporations
– Most innovations are introduced to societies by companies
– Spread through media
– Change agents
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Elements of Culture
• Cultural values
–
–
–
–

Individualism/Collectivism Index
Power Distance Index
Uncertainty Avoidance Index
Cultural Values and Consumer Behavior

4-12


Hofstede’s Indexes

Language, and Linguistic Distance
Exhibit 4.5

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Elements of Culture
• Rituals
– Marriage
– Funerals

• Symbols
– Language

►

Linguistic distance

– Aesthetics as symbols
►

Insensitivity to aesthetic values can offend, create a negative impression, and, in general, render
marketing efforts ineffective or even damaging

• Beliefs
– To make light of superstitions in other cultures can be an expensive
mistake

• Thought processes
– Difference in perception
►

Focus vs. big-picture
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Metaphorical Journeys
through 23 Nations
Exhibit 4.6

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Cultural Knowledge

• Factual knowledge
– Has meaning as a straightforward fact about a culture
– Assumes additional significance when interpreted within the
context of the culture
►

Needs to be learned

• Interpretive knowledge
– Requires a degree of insight that may best be described as a
feeling
►
►
►

Most dependent of past experience for interpretation
Most frequently prone to misinterpretation
Requires consultation and cooperation with bilingual natives with marketing
backgrounds

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Cultural Sensitivity and Tolerance
• Being attuned to the nuances of culture so that a
new culture can be viewed objectively, evaluated
and appreciated
– Cultures are not right or wrong, better or worse, they are simply
different
– The more exotic the situation, the more sensitive, tolerant, and

flexible one needs to be

4-17


Cultural Change
• Dynamic in nature – it is a living process
• Paradoxical because culture is conservative and
resists change
– Changes caused by war or natural disasters
– Society seeking ways to solve problems created by changes in
environment
– Culture is the means used in adjusting to the environmental and
historical components of human existence

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Cultural Borrowing
• Effort to learn from others’ cultural ways in the
quest for better solutions to a society’s particular
problems
– Imitating diversity of other makes cultures unique
– Contact can make cultures grow closer or further apart

• Habits, foods, and customs are adapted to fit
each society’s needs

4-19

Similarities – An Illusion
• A common language does not guarantee a
similar interpretation of word or phrases
– May cause lack of understanding because of apparent and
assumed similarities

• Just because something sells in one country
doesn’t mean it will sell in another
– Cultural differences among member of European Union a
product of centuries of history

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Resistance to Change
• Gradual cultural growth does not occur without
some resistance
– New methods, ideas, and products are held to be suspect before
they are accepted, if ever

• Resistance to genetically modified (GM) foods
– Resisted by Europeans
– Consumed by Asians
– Not even labeled in U.S. until 2000

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Planned and Unplanned

Cultural Change
• Determine which cultural factors conflict with an
innovation
• Change those factors from obstacles to acceptance into
stimulants for change
• Marketers have two options when introducing and
innovation to a culture
– They can wait
– They can cause change

• Cultural congruence
– Marketing products similar to ones already on the market in a
manner as congruent as possible with existing cultural norms
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Consequences of Innovation
• May inadvertently bring about change that affects very
fabric of a social system
• Consequences of diffusion of an innovation
– May be functional or dysfunctional
►

Depending on whether the effects on the social system are desirable or undesirable

• Introduction of a processed feeding formula into the diet
of babies in underdeveloped countries ended up being
dysfunctional

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Summary
• A complete and thorough appreciation of the
origins and elements of culture may well be the
single most important gain to a foreign marketer
in the preparation of marketing plans and
strategies
• Marketers can control the product offered to a
market – its promotion, price, and eventual
distribution methods – but they have only limited
control over the cultural environment within
which these plans must be implemented

4-24


Summary
• When a company is operating internationally
each new environment that is influenced by
elements unfamiliar and sometimes
unrecognizable to the marketer complicates the
task
• Special effort and study are needed to absorb
enough understanding of the foreign culture to
cope with the uncontrollable features

4-25