International Marketing

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

McGraw-Hill/Irwin
International Marketing 14/e Copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 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

4-2
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

4-3
 Culture’s Pervasive Impact
• Culture affects every part of our lives, every day,
from birth to death, and everything in between
– Japan – the year of the Fire Horse
• As countries move from agricultural to industrial to
services economies’ birthrates decline
• Consequences of consumption
– Tobacco
• Culture not only affects consumption, it also affects
production
– Stomach cancer in Japan

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 Birthrates (per 1000 women)
Exhibit 4.1

4-5
 Patterns of Consumption
(annual per capita)
Exhibit 4.2

4-6
 Consequences of Consumption
Exhibit 4.3

4-7
Human Universals – Myth of Diversity
• Use metaphors • Consider aspects of sexuality
private
• Have a system of status
and roles • Express emotions with face
• Are ethnocentric • Reciprocate
• Create art • Use mood altering drugs
• Conceive of success and • Overestimate objectivity of
failure thought
• Create groups antagonistic to • Fear of snakes
outsiders
• Recognize economic
• Imitate outside influences obligations in exchanges of
goods and services
• Resist outside influences
• Trade and transport of goods

4-8
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

4-10
 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

4-11
 We All Love Flowers – Why?
• Geography
• History
• Technology and economics
• Social institutions
• Cultural values
• Aesthetics as symbols

4-12
 History, the Political Economy,
and Technology
• History
– Impact of specific events can be seen reflected in technology, social
institutions, cultural values, and even consumer behavior
► Tobacco was the original source of the Virginia colony’s economic survival in the 1600s

• Political Economy
– Three approaches to governance competed for world dominance
► Fascism
► Communism
► Democracy/free enterprise

• Technology
– Jet aircraft, air conditioning, televisions, computers, Internet, etc.
– None more important than the birth control pill

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

4-14
 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

4-15
 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

4-16
 Elements of Culture
• Cultural values
– Individualism/Collectivism Index
– Power Distance Index
– Uncertainty Avoidance Index
– Cultural Values and Consumer Behavior

4-17
 Hofstede’s Indexes
Language, and Linguistic Distance
Exhibit 4.5

4-18
 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

4-22
 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

4-24
 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

4-28
 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

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 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

4-30