behavior

Chapter 12

Cultural and Cross-Cultural Influences

Copyright © 2010 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

McGraw-Hill/Irwin

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• Culture refers to the mental frames and meanings that are shared by most people in a social group.
• Cultural meanings broadly include:
• Common perspectives
• Typical cognitions
• Characteristic patterns of behavior

What is Culture?

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• Issues to consider while analyzing culture:
• Cultural meanings can be analyzed at different levels.
• Macro
• Subcultures
• Social classes
• Reference groups
• Family

What is Culture? (cont.)

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• The concept of shared or common meaning is critical to understanding culture.
• Need to consider cultural meaning at a macro social level.
• A meaning is cultural if many people in a social group share the same basic meaning.
• Cultural meanings are created by people.
• Construction of cultural meanings is more obvious at the level of smaller groups.

What is Culture? (cont.)

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• Cultural meanings are constantly in motion and can be subject to rapid changes.
• Social groups differ in the amount of freedom people have to adopt and use certain cultural meanings.

What is Culture? (cont.)

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The Content of Culture

• The content of culture includes:
• The beliefs, attitudes, goals, and values held by most people in a society.
• The meaning of characteristic behaviors, rules, customs, and norms that most people follow.
• The meanings of significant aspects of the social and physical environment, including:
• Major social institutions in a society.
• Typical physical objects used by people in a society.

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The Content of Culture (cont.)

• The goal of cultural analysis is to understand the cultural meanings of concepts from the point of view of the consumers who create and use them.
• Behaviors can have important cultural meanings.

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The Content of Culture (cont.)

• Aspects of the social environment can have rich cultural meanings.
• Marketing strategies must be sensitive to cultural meanings.
• Marketers need to understand the cultural meanings of their products and brands.

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Measuring the Content of Culture

• Content analysis
• The content of culture can often be read from the material objects produced by the social group.
• Ethnographic fieldwork
• Procedures involve detailed and prolonged observation of consumers’ emotional responses, cognitions, and behaviors during their ordinary daily lives.

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Measuring the Content of Culture (cont.)

• Measures of values
• Marketers use procedures to directly measure the dominant cultural values in a society.
• Rokeach Value Survey
• Kahle’s List of Values
• Commercial techniques
• VALS (Values and Lifestyles)
• Yankelovich MONITOR

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The Core Values of American Culture

• Core values are the abstract end goals that people strive to achieve in their lives.
• Knowing the core values held by people in a society can help marketers understand the basis for the customer–product relationship for those consumers.

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Exhibit 12.1 - Core Values in America

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Exhibit 12.1 - Core Values in America

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Changing Values in America

• Can create problems for marketers.
• Can create new marketing opportunities.
• Usually accompanied by changes in behavior.

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Exhibit 12.2 - Lifestyle Trends in America

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Exhibit 12.2 - Lifestyle Trends in America

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Culture as a Process

• Cultural meaning is present in three locations:
• Social and physical environments
• Products and services
• Individual consumers
• The cultural process describes how cultural meaning is transferred between locations by the actions of organizations and by individuals in the society.

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Exhibit 12.3 - A Model of the Cultural Process

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Culture as a Process (cont.)

• Two ways that meaning is transferred in a consumption-oriented society:
• Marketing strategies are designed to move cultural meanings from the physical and social environments into products and services to make them attractive to consumers.
• Consumers actively seek to acquire cultural meanings in products in order to establish a desirable personal identity or self-concept.

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Moving Cultural Meanings Into Products

• Meanings are moved into products by:
• Advertising
• Symbols
• Pricing strategies
• Design strategies
• Distribution strategies

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Cultural Meanings in Products

• Products, stores, and brands express cultural or symbolic meaning.
• Cultural meanings of products vary across different societies.
• Not all people in a social group perceive a product, brand, or activity to have the same cultural meaning.

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Cultural Meanings in Products (cont.)

• Some cultural meanings in products are obvious to those familiar with the culture, but others are hidden.
• Many companies know little about the symbolic cultural meanings of their products.
• Many products contain personal meaning in addition to cultural meanings.

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Moving Cultural Meanings From Products into Consumers

• Rituals are symbolic actions performed by consumers to create, affirm, evoke, or revise certain cultural meanings.
• Acquisition rituals
• Bargaining rituals
• Possession rituals
• Product nurturing rituals
• Personalizing rituals
• Exchange, grooming, and divestment rituals

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Cultural Meanings in Consumers

• Consumers buy products to acquire cultural meanings to use in establishing their self-identities.
• Americans have a lot of freedom to create different selves through their choices of lifestyle, environments, and products.

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Cultural Meanings in Consumers (cont.)

• Goods cannot provide all the meanings that consumers need to construct healthy self-concepts.
• People may consume products in an attempt to acquire important life meanings.
• People have favorite possessions that are filled with important, self-relevant meanings.

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Moving Meanings to the Cultural Environment

• Consumer meanings can be transferred to the cultural environment through people’s social behavior.
• The cultural process is a continuous and reciprocal movement of meaning between the overall cultural environment, organizations, and individuals in the society

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Marketing Implications

• Managing cultural meaning
• The shared cultural meanings of a brand are a large part of its economic value, or its brand equity.
• Using celebrity endorsers in ads
• Celebrities are cultural objects with specific cultural meanings.
• Can be related to their credibility and expertise concerning a product.

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Helping Consumers Obtain Cultural Meanings

• Marketers can help transfer important cultural meanings from products to the customer by understanding the role of rituals in consumer behavior.

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Cross-Cultural Influences

• Cross-cultural differences:
• Do not always coincide with national borders.
• Not always clearly demarcated by national borders.

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Cross-Cultural Differences

• Differences in consumption culture
• Self-concept
• Affect how people interpret product meanings and use products.
• Similar cross-cultural changes
• Create similar marketing opportunities in many societies.

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Cross-Cultural Differences (cont.)

• Materialism
• A multidimensional value including possessiveness, envy, and non-generosity.
• Marketing implications:
• Marketers must determine which cross-cultural differences are relevant to their situations.

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Cross-Cultural Differences (cont.)

• A sensitivity to and tolerance for cross-cultural differences in meaning is a highly desirable trait for international marketing managers.
• Managers from the local culture bring an intimate knowledge of the indigenous cultural meanings to strategic decision making.

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Developing International Marketing Strategies

• Adapting strategy to culture
• Adaptation approach
• Standardizing strategy across cultures
• Global marketing
• Less expensive
• Changing the culture

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Marketing Implications: The European Union

• The considerable cross-cultural differences among the EU countries will not disappear.
• It will be difficult to develop standardized marketing strategies to sell products in all countries in Europe.
• Some products may lend themselves to standardized strategies, while others will require careful adaptation to local cultures.

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Summary

• Culture and cross-cultural factors influence consumers’:
• Affective responses and cognitions
• Behaviors
• Physical and social environment
• Culture refers to the meanings shared by people in a society.
• Marketers can study the content of culture.

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Summary (cont.)

• Values and lifestyle trends influence marketing strategies.
• Cultural meaning is moved between different locations through the cultural process.
• Cross-cultural differences can influence consumers.
• Marketers must use their knowledge of culture in developing international marketing strategies.