implication of culture for a marketer

8/14/2019 Implication of Culture for a Marketer

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Importance of culture

for a marketer


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Dealing with culture

Culture is a problematic issue for manymarketers since it is inherently nebulousand often difficult to understand. One may

violate the cultural norms of another country without being informed of this, andpeople from different cultures may feeluncomfortable in each others presencewithout knowing exactly why (for example,two speakers may unconsciously continueto attempt to adjust to reach anincompatible preferred interpersonaldistance).


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Warning about

stereotyping When observing a culture, one must

be careful not to over-generalizeabout traits that one sees. Researchin social psychology has suggested astrong tendency for people toperceive an outgroup as morehomogenous than an ingroup, evenwhen they knew what members hadbeen assigned to each group purelyby chance.


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When there is often a grain of truth to some of the perceiveddifferences, the temptation toover-generalize is often strong.Note that there are often

significant individual differenceswithin cultures.


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Cultural lessons

For example, within the Muslimtradition, the dog is considered adirty animal, so portraying it asmans best friend in anadvertisement is counter-productive. Packaging, seen as areflection of the quality of the realproduct, is considerably moreimportant in Asia than in the U.S.,where there is a tendency to focuson the contents which really count.


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Many cultures observesignificantly greater levels of formality than that typical in theU.S., and Japanese negotiator tend to observe long silent

pauses as a speakers point isconsidered.


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Hofstedes

Dimensions . Gert Hofstede, a Dutch

researcher, was able tointerview a large number of IBMexecutives in various countries,and found that cultural

differences tended to center around four key dimensions:


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Individualism vs.

collectivism To what extent do people believe inindividual responsibility and rewardrather than having these measuresaimed at the larger group? Contraryto the stereotype, Japan actuallyranks in the middle of this dimension,while Indonesia and West Africa ranktoward the collectivistic side. TheU.S., Britain, and the Netherlandsrate toward individualism.


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Masculinity vs .

femininity Masculine values involve

competition and conqueringnature by means such as largeconstruction projects, whilefeminine values involve

harmony and environmentalprotection


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. Japan is one of the moremasculine countries, while theNetherlands rank relativelylow. The U.S. is close to themiddle, slightly toward the

masculine side


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Uncertainty avoidance

involves the extent to which astructured situation with clear rules is preferred to a moreambiguous one; in general,countries with lower

uncertainty avoidance tend tobe more tolerant of risk.


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Japan ranks very high. Fewcountries are very low in any

absolute sense, but relativelyspeaking, Britain and Hong Kongare lower, and the U.S. is in the

lower range of the distribution.


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High vs. low context

cultures In some cultures, what you see is

what you getthe speaker is

expected to make his or her pointsclear and limit ambiguity. This is thecase in the U.S.if you havesomething on your mind, you are

expected to say it directly, subjectto some reasonable standards of diplomacy.


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In Japan, in contrast, facialexpressions and what is notsaid may be an important clueto understanding a speakersmeaning.

implication of culture for a marketer

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