Culture: Definition, Functions, Characteristics, Elements of

Culture:
Word ‘culture’ comes from the Latin word ‘cultura,’ related to cult or worship. In its broadest
sense, the term refers to the result of human interaction.

Society’s culture comprises the shared values, understandings, assumptions, and goals that are
learned from earlier generations, imposed by present members of society, and passed on to
succeeding generations.

Sometimes an individual is described as a highly cultured person, meaning that the person in
question has certain features such as his/her speech, manner, and taste for literature, music, or
painting, which distinguish him from others.

Culture, in this sense, refers to certain personal characteristics of an individual.

However, this is not the sense in which the word culture is used and understood in social
sciences.

Sometimes culture is used in popular discourse to refer to a celebration or an evening of

entertainment, as when one speaks of a ‘cultural show.’ In this sense, culture is identified with
aesthetics or the fine arts such as dance, music, or drama.

This is also different from the technical meaning of the word culture.

Culture is used in a special sense in anthropology and sociology. It refers to the sum of human
beings’ lifeways, behavior, beliefs, feelings, and thoughts; it connotes everything acquired by
them as social beings. Culture has been defined in several ways.

There is no consensus among sociologists and anthropologists regarding the definition of

culture.

Some writers add to these definitions some of the important” other capabilities and habits” such
as language and the techniques for making and using tools.

Meaning of Culture

Culture is a comprehensive and encompassing term that includes what we have learned about
our history, values, morals, customs, art, and habits. Here in this section, we shall mention quite
a few definitions of culture and analyze those to form a clear picture of a culture that may help
us formulate appropriate marketing strategies.
A culture is “the complex of values, ideas, attitudes, and other meaningful symbols created by
people to shape human behavior and the artifacts of that behavior as they are transmitted from
one generation to the next.”

The above definition highlights three important attributes of an individual’s culture. First, it is
‘created by people,’ evolving due to human activities and passed on to the succeeding
generations.

Second, the impact of cultural influence is both intangible and tangible. People’s basic attitudes
and values are a direct result of their cultural environment. Beliefs in freedom of speech and
choice, heterosexuality, and God are products of human action. Additionally, people leave
physical evidence of their culture through art and craftwork, buildings, furniture, laws, and food.

Third, the cultural environment evolves, and it is most often evolves over lengthy periods.
Changes in women’s roles in the home and business and the outward desire for leisure time
have come about quite slowly. Other changes, however, occur quicker. Clothing styles, for
example, come and go rather hastily.

Culture may also be defined in other ways. According to Kroeber, “the mass of the learned and
transmitted motor reactions, habits, techniques, ideas, and values – and the behavior they
include – is what constitutes culture. It is all those things about men that are more than just
biological or organic, and that are also more than merely psychological.”

It is the human-made part of the environment, the total way of life of a people, the social legacy
that the individual acquires from his group. The culture into which we are born provides many
ready-made solutions to problems growing out of the geographic, biological, and social
environment in which we live.

These ready-made solutions are provided in the form of cultural patterns relating to the
ideology, role definitions, and socialization procedures of the society in which we live. These
cultural patterns are transmitted to individuals through social institutions such as family,
educational institutions, religious institutions, social classes, languages, parents’ attitudes,
behavior, and reading.

As a result, the cultural patterns that consumers learn to influence their ideas and values, the
roles they play, how they carry those roles out, and how their needs and desires are handled.

E. B. Taylor defined culture as that complex whole, including knowledge, belief, art, law, morals,
customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Culture is thus composed of common habits and patterns of living of people in daily activities
and common interest in entertainment, sports, news, and even advertising. Culture is a
comprehensive concept, which includes almost everything that influences an individual’s
thought processes and behaviors. Culture does not include inherited responses and
predispositions.
Rather it is acquired. One more thing should also be borne in mind about culture. That is, in
modern complex societies, culture seldom provides detailed prescriptions for appropriate
behavior. Rather, it supplies boundaries within which most individuals think and act.

You should also keep in mind that the nature of cultural influences is such that we are seldom
aware of them. An individual behaves, thinks, and feels like other members of the same culture
because it seems natural.

The concept of culture has been debated in anthropological literature for at least two centuries
and has acquired almost as many definitions as those trying to define it.

According to Singer, recent definitions of culture have grown progressively more formal and
abstract. Culture has often been loosely defined as a behavior, as observed through social
relations and material artifacts.

Although these may provide some raw data for a construct of culture, they are not, in
themselves, the constituents of culture. In a deeper anthropological sense, culture includes
patterns, norms, rules, and standards that find expression in behavior, social relations, and
artifacts.

These are the constituents of culture. Singer’s definition revealed this development: ‘Culture
consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior, acquired and transmitted by
symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups including their embodiments
in artifacts.

The essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas,
especially their attached values. Thus, according to the above definition, culture is the
conditioning elements of behavior and its products.

Referring to Ralph Linton, Berkman, and Gilson in their book ‘Consumer Behavior – Concepts
and Strategies,’ defined culture as ‘patterns of learned behavior held in common and
transmitted by the members of any given society.’

Thus, culture consists of a society’s behaviors, which are well established and accepted by the
members of that society. The majority follow these patterns.

For example, most South-Asian women wear ‘sharee,’ and it is an established behavior pattern in
this culture. There are exceptions to this pattern as well.

For example, some women may wear T-shirts and trousers, but this will not be considered a
pattern since it is not found in the majority’s behavior. Let us now explain this definition at some
length.
 Definition of  Culture

Culture has been defined in some ways, but most simply, as the learned and shared behavior of
a community of interacting human beings.

According to British anthropologist Edward Taylor, “Culture is that complex whole which
includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as. a member of society”.

According to Phatak, Bhagat, and Kashlak, “Culture is a concept that has been used in several
social science disciplines to explain variations in human thought processes in different parts of
the world.”         ‘

According to J.P. Lederach, “Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of
people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around
them.”

According to R. Linton, “A culture is a configuration of learned behaviors and results of behavior

whose component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society.”

According to G. Hofstede, “Culture is the collective programming of the mind which

distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.”

According to H.T. Mazumdar, “Culture is the total of human achievements, material and non-
material, capable of transmission, sociologically, i.e., by tradition and communication, vertically
as well as horizontally.”

Actually, culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive
constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through socialization. These shared
patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another
group.

3 Aspects of Culture

If we explain the above definition, we can identify three aspects of a given culture;

1. culture is a pattern of behavior,

2. culture is learned, and
3. culture is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Culture is a Pattern of Behavior

Culture refers basically to the style of behavior. This style is found to be present in the behaviors
of the majority of people living in a particular culture.
This pattern varies from culture to culture, and as a result, consumptions vary among countries.
The pattern of behavior you will see in South-Asian culture will definitely not be seen in other
cultures. The behavior established by culture is found to be practiced by the majority as it
satisfies their needs.

Someone not following the established pattern of behavior is likely to be condemned by others
in society. Since the majority follows the same style of behavior in a particular culture, it
becomes a pattern.

To be successful, marketers must find out the patterns of behavior and design their marketing
strategies accordingly to be successful in a culture.

Culture is Learned

The second important aspect relating to culture is that we learn it through experiences and
interactions.

The aspects of culture are not found in an individual right from his birth. He rather learns those
from others in the society as he follows, observes, and interacts with them. Since experiences
vary among people of different societies, they learn different things resulting in differences
among cultures.

For example, a South-Asian child grows in a European country among the Europeans and will
definitely not learn South-Asian cultural aspects but the European cultural aspects, influencing
his behavior.

It clearly indicates that culture is learned, not present from birth, why people of different
cultures see the same object or situation differently.

The reason is that their learning differs. For example, wearing mini-skirts by females is seen
negatively in South-Asia, where it is seen positively in Western countries. Since people of two
different cultures learn differently, they are likely to view the same object differently.

People learn about their cultures from their parents and different social organizations and
groups. This will be discussed later.

Culture is Transmitted from One Generation to the Next.

We have in our culture in terms of values, ideas, attitudes, symbols, artifacts, or other, and we
are likely to conform to those.

We follow the patterns of our cultures and teach them to the next generation to guide them.
This process of transmitting the cultural elements from one generation to the next is known as
‘Enculturation”.
 Thus, cultural elements do not persist in one generation but are transmitted to the next
generation and survive the entire life span of an individual. That is why a lot of similarities in
behaviors are found between people of two different generations.

3 Components Of Culture

If you study a culture, whether modern or backward, you will identify three important
components in it.

3 Components Of Culture are;

1. cognitive component,
2. material component, and
3. normative component.

In other words, the culture of a particular society is composed of three distinct elements or
components. Let us now have a brief discussion on them:

Cognitive Component

The basic component of any culture is one relating to people’s knowledge about the universe’s
creation and existence. This aspect is based on either people’s observation or on certain factual
evidence that they have.

An individual of a backward culture believes in gods, superstitions, and other objects as a part of
their cognitive aspect. But, in a technologically advanced society, the cognitive aspect is based
on scientific experiments and their applications.

The cognitive component of an advanced society’s culture is quite distinct from that of a
primitive one because of the refinement of knowledge through systematic testing and
observation.

Material Component

Another important component of any given culture is the material feature of society. It consists
of all the tangible things that human beings make, use, and give value to the material
component varies from culture to culture as the cognitive component.

It is based on the technological state that society has achieved and understood, looking at
society’s artifacts. The artifacts include the type of housing where people live, the furniture they
use, and other material goods they possess.

Since it is tied to the level of technological advancement of the society, the material features of
cultures are very diverse as technological achievements vary.
Cognitive Component

The other important component of a culture is the cognitive component. The cognitive
component is composed of society’s values and norms, which guides and regulates behavior.

In other words, it consists of the values, beliefs, and rules by which society directs people’s
interactions. Understanding culture means understanding its values.

Values are shared standards of acceptable and unacceptable, good and bad, desirable, and
undesirable. Values are abstract, very general concepts that are expressed by norms.

Norms are rules and guidelines, setting forth proper attitudes and behaviors for specific
situations.

For example, in South Asian countries, the culture places a high value on religious training;
therefore, our norms specify formal religious education for every child up to a certain age. Mass
religious education norms create a need for religious teachers, books, and other related
materials.

Among the values the culture holds, some are core or central values, while others are peripheral
values. Core values are the deeply held enduring beliefs that guide our actions, judgments, and
specific behaviors, supporting our efforts to realize important aims.

Although not as deeply embedded or as fundamental as central values, our peripheral values
reflect our central values. If you value your health, you may value regular exercise and a low-salt,
low-cholesterol diet. You may also abstain from smoking cigarettes and drinking alcoholic
beverages.

Marketers should give a deep look at each of the three components of culture discussed above
as they determine the consumption of goods and services by people of a particular culture to a
great extent. Failure to understand them may become a grave concern for marketers.

Characteristics of Culture

All organizations have a culture because they are embedded in specific societal cultures and are
part of them.

Some values create a dominant culture in organizations that help guide employees’ day-to-day
behavior.

There is also evidence that these dominant cultures can positively impact desirable outcomes,
such as successfully conducting mergers and acquisitions supporting product innovation
processes and helping firms cope with rapid economic and technological change.
 Culture has various characteristics. From various definitions, we can deduce the following
characteristics of culture:

 Learned Behavior.
 Culture is Abstract.
 Culture Includes Attitudes, Values, and Knowledge.
 Culture also Includes Material Objects.
 Culture is Shared by the Members of Society.
 Culture is Super-Organic.
 Culture is Pervasive.
 Culture is a Way of Life.
 Culture is Idealistic.
 Culture is Transmitted among Members of Society.
 Culture is Continually Changing.
 Language is the Chief Vehicle of Culture.
 Culture is Integrated.
 Culture is Dynamic.
 Culture is Transmissive.
 Culture Varies from Society to Society.
 Culture is Gratifying.

Learned Behavior

Not all behavior is learned, but most of it is learned; combing one’s hair, standing in line, telling
jokes, criticizing the President, and going to the movie all constitute behaviors that had to be
learned.

Sometimes the terms conscious learning and unconscious learning are used to distinguish the
learning.

Some behavior is obvious. People can be seen going to football games, eating with forks, or
driving automobiles. Such behavior is called “overt” behavior. Other behavior is less visible.

Culture is Abstract

Culture exists in the minds or habits of the members of society. Culture is the shared ways of
doing and thinking. There are degrees of visibility of cultural behavior, ranging from persons’
regularized activities to their internal reasons for so doing.

In other words, we cannot see culture as such; we can only see human behavior. This behavior
occurs in a regular, patterned fashion, and it is called culture.
Culture Includes Attitudes, Values, and Knowledge

There is a widespread error in the thinking of many people who tend to regard the ideas,
attitudes, and notions they have as “their own.”

It is easy to overestimate the uniqueness of one’s own attitudes and ideas. When there is an
agreement with other people, it is largely Unnoticed, but when there is a disagreement or
difference, one is usually conscious of it.

Your differences, however, may also be cultural. For example, suppose you are a Muslim, and the
other person is a Christian.

Culture also Includes Material Objects.

Man’s behavior results in creating objects.

Men were behaving when they made these things. To make these objects required numerous
and various skills which human beings gradually built up through the ages. Man has invented
something else, and so on.

Occasionally one encounters the view that man does not really “make” steel or a battleship.

All these things first existed in a “state nature.”

The man merely modified their form, changed them from a state in which they were to the state
in which he now uses them. The chair was first a tree which man surely did not make. But the
chair is’ more than trees, and the jet airplane is more than iron ore and so forth.

The Members of Society share culture

The patterns of learned behavior and behavior results are possessed not by one or a few people,
but usually by a large proportion.

Thus, many millions of persons share such behavior patterns as automobiles or the English
language. Persons may share some part of a culture unequally.

Sometimes the people share different aspects of culture.

Culture is Super-Organic

Culture is sometimes called super organic. It implies that “culture” is somehow superior to
“nature.” The word super-organic is useful when it implies that what may be quite a different
phenomenon from a cultural point of view.
For example, a tree means different things to the botanist who studies it, the older woman who
uses it for shade in the late summer afternoon, the farmer who picks its fruit, the motorist who
collides with it, and the young lovers who carve their initials in its trunk.

The same physical objects and physical characteristics, in other words, may constitute a variety
of quite different cultural objects and cultural characteristics.

Culture is Pervasive

Culture is pervasive; it touches every aspect of life. The pervasiveness of culture is manifest in
two ways.

First, culture provides an unquestioned context within which individual action and response take
place. Cultural norms govern not only emotional action but relational actions.

Second, culture pervades social activities and institutions.

Culture is a Way of Life

Culture means simply the “way of life” of a people or their “design for a living.” Kluckhohn and
Kelly define it in his sense”, A culture is a historically derived system of explicit and implicit
designs for living, which tends to be shared by all or specially designed members of a group.”

Explicit culture refers to similarities in word and action, which can be directly observed.

For example, adolescent cultural behavior can be generalized from regularities in dress,
mannerism, and conversation. Implicit culture exists in abstract forms, which are not quite
obvious.

Culture is Idealistic

Culture embodies the ideals and norms of a group. It is the sum-total of the ideal patterns and
norms of behavior of a group. Culture consists of the intellectual, artistic, and social ideals and
institutions that the members of society profess and strive to confirm.

Culture is Transmitted among Members of Society

Persons learn cultural ways from persons.

Many of them are “handed down” by their elders, parents, teachers, and others. Other cultural
behaviors are “handed up” to elders. Some of the transmission of culture is among
contemporaries.

For example, the styles of dress, political views, and the use of recent labor-saving devices. One
does not acquire a behavior pattern spontaneously.
He learns it. That means that someone teaches him, and he learns. Much of the learning process
for the teacher and the learner is unconscious, unintentional, or accidental.

Culture is Continually Changing

There is one fundamental and inescapable attribute (a special quality) of culture, the fact of
unending change.

Some societies sometimes change slowly, and hence in comparison to other societies, seem not
to be changing at all. But they are changing, even though not obviously so.

Language is the Chief Vehicle of Culture

Man lives not only in the present but also in the past and future.

He can do this because he possesses a language that transmits what was learned in the past and
enables him to transmit the accumulated wisdom to the next generation.

A specialized language pattern serves as a common bond to the members of a particular group
or subculture.

Although culture is transmitted in various ways, language is one of the most important vehicles
for perpetuating cultural patterns.

Culture is Integrated

This is known as holism, or the various parts of a culture being interconnected.

All aspects of a culture are related to one another, and to truly understand a culture, one must
learn about all of its parts, not only a few.

Culture is Dynamic

This simply means that cultures interact and change.

Because most cultures are in contact with other cultures, they exchange ideas and symbols. All
cultures change. Otherwise, they would have problems adapting to changing environments.

And because cultures are integrated, the entire system must likely adjust if one component in
the system changes.

Culture is Transmissive

Culture is transmissive as it is transmitted front one generation to another.

 Language is the main vehicle of culture. Language in different forms makes it possible for the
present generation to understand the achievement of earlier generations.

Transmission of culture may take place by imitation as well as by instruction.

Culture Varies from Society to Society

Every society has a culture of its own. It differs from society to society. The culture of every
society is unique to itself. Cultures are not uniform.

Cultural elements like customs, traditions, morals, values, beliefs are not uniform everywhere.
Culture varies from time to time also.

Culture is Gratifying

Culture provides proper opportunities for the satisfaction of our needs and desires.

Our needs, both biological and social, are fulfilled in cultural ways. Culture determines and
guides various activities of man. Thus, culture is defined as the process through which human
beings satisfy their wants.

So we can easily say that culture has various features that embodied it in an important position
in organizations and other aspects.

Functions of Culture

We will review the functions that culture performs and assess whether culture can be a liability
for an organization. Culture performs some functions within an organization.

 First, it has a boundary-defining role; it creates distinctions between one organization and
another.
 Second, it conveys a sense of identity for organization members.
 Third, culture facilitates the generation of commitment to something larger than one’s individual
self-interest.
 Fourth, it enhances the stability of the social system. Culture is the social glue that helps hold
the organization together by providing appropriate standards for what employees should say
and do.
 Finally, culture serves as a sense-making and control mechanism that guides and

shapes employees’ attitudes and behavior. It is this last function that is of particular interest to
us.

The role of culture in influencing employee behavior appears to be increasingly important in

today’s workplace.
 As organizations have widened spans of control, flattened structures introduced, teams reduced
formalization and empowered employees. The shared meaning provided by a strong culture
ensures that everyone is pointed in the same direction.

Elements of Culture

Culture is transmitted to employees in many ways. The most significant are stories, rituals,
material symbols, and language.

Society’s culture also comprises the shared values, understandings, assumptions, and goals that
are learned from earlier generations, imposed by present members of society, and passed on to
succeeding generations.

There are some elements of culture about which the managers of international operation should
be aware of.

 Languages,
 Norms,
 Symbols,
 Values,
 Attitude,
 Rituals,
 Customs and Manners,
 Material Culture,
 Education,
 Physical Artifacts,
 Language, Jargons, and Metaphors,
 Stories, Myths, and Legends,
 Ceremonies and Celebrations,
 Behavioral Norms, and
 Shared Beliefs and Values.

Languages

It is a primary means used to transmit information and ideas. Knowledge of local language can
help because-

 It permits a clearer understanding of the situation.

 It provides direct access to local people.
 Understanding of implied meanings.

Religion: The spiritual beliefs of a society are often so powerful that they transcend other
cultural aspects. Religion affect-
 The work habit of people
 Work and social customs
 Politics and business

Norms

Cultures differ widely in their norms, or standards and expectations for behaving. Norms are
often divided into two types, formal norms and informal norms.

Formal norms, also called mores and laws, refer to the standards of behavior considered the
most important in any society.

Informal norms, also called folkways and customs, refer to standards of behavior that are
considered less important but still influence how we behave.

Symbols

Every culture is filled with symbols of things that stand for something else, which often suggests
various reactions and emotions.

Some symbols are actually types of nonverbal communication, while other symbols are, in fact,
material objects.

Values

Values are a society’s ideas about what is good or bad, right or wrong – such as the
widespread belief that stealing is immoral and unfair.

Values determine how individuals will probably respond in any given circumstances.

Attitude

Attitude is a persistent tendency to feel and behave in a particular way.

Actually, it is the external displays of underlying beliefs that people use to signal to other
people.

Rituals

Rituals are processes or sets of actions that are repeated in specific circumstances and with a
specific meaning. They may be used in rites of passage, such as when someone is promoted or
retires.

They may be associated with company events such as the release of a new event. They may also
be associated with a day like Eid day.
 Customs and Manners

Customs are common and establish practices. Manners are behaviors that are regarded as
appropriate in a particular society. These indicate the rules of behavior that enforce ideas of
right and wrong.

They can be the traditions, rules, written laws, etc.

Material Culture

Another cultural element is the artifacts, or material objects, that constitute a society’s material
culture. It consists of objects that people make. Like-

 Economic infrastructure (transportation, communication, and energy capabilities)

 Social infrastructure (Health, housing, and education systems)
 Financial infrastructure (Banking, insurance, and financial services)

Education

It influences many aspects of culture.

Actually, culture is the entire accumulation of artificial objects, conditions, tools, techniques,
ideas, symbols, and behavior patterns peculiar to a group of people, possessing a certain
consistency of its own and capable of transmission from one generation to another.

Physical Artifacts

These are the tangible manifestations and key elements of organizational culture.

If you visit different organizations, you’ll notice that each is unique in terms of its physical layout,
use of facilities, centralization or dispersion of common utilities, and so on.

This uniqueness is not incidental; instead, they represent the symbolic expressions of an
underlying meaning, values, and beliefs shared by people in the organization. The workplace
culture greatly affects the performance of an organization.

Language, Jargons, and Metaphors

These elements of organizational culture play an important role in identifying a company’s

culture.

While the language is a means of universal communication, most business houses tend to
develop their own unique terminologies, phrases, and acronyms.
For instance, in the organizational linguistics code, “Kremlin” may mean the headquarters; in
Goal India Limited, the acronym. J.I.T. (Just In Time) was jokingly used to describe all the badly
planned fire-fighting jobs.

Stories, Myths, and Legends

These are, in a way, an extension of organizational language. They epitomize the unwritten
values and morals of organizational life.

If you collect the various stories, anecdotes, and jokes shared in an organization, they often read
like plots and themes, in which nothing changes except the characters.

They rationalize the complexity and turbulence of activities and events to allow for predictable
action-taking.

Ceremonies and Celebrations

These are consciously enacted behavioral artifacts which help in reinforcing the organization’s
cultural values and assumptions.

For example, every year, Tata Steel celebrates Founder’s Day to commemorate and reiterate its
adherence to the organization’s original values.

Stating the importance of ceremonies and celebrations, Deal and Kennedy (1982) say, “Without
expressive events, and culture will die. In the absence of ceremony, important values have no
impact.”

Behavioral Norms

This is one of the most important elements of organizational culture. They describe the
nature of expectations, which impinge on the members’ behavior.

Behavioral norms determine how the members will behave, interact, and relate with each other.

Shared Beliefs and Values

All organizations have their unique set of basic beliefs and values (also called moral codes),
shared by most of its members. These are the mental pictures of organizational reality and form
the basis of defining the organization’s right or wrong.

For instance, in an organization, if the predominant belief is that meeting the customers’
demands is essential for success, any behavior that supposedly meets these criteria is
acceptable, even if it violates the established rules and procedures.
Values and beliefs focus organizational energies toward certain actions while discouraging the
other behavioral patterns.

Factors Affecting the Culture

There are so many ways of examining cultural differences and their impact on international
management. Culture can affect technology transfer, managerial attitudes, managerial ideology,
and even business-government relations.

In overall terms, the cultural impact on international management is reflected by these basic
beliefs and behaviors.

Here are some specific examples where the culture of a society can directly affect management
approaches:

Centralized vs. Decentralized Decision Making

In some societies, top managers make all-important organizational decisions.

In others, these decisions are defused throughout the enterprise; middle and lower-level
managers actively participate and make decisions.

Safety vs. Risk

In some societies, organizational decision-makers are risk-averse and have great difficulty with
conditions of uncertainty. In others, risk-taking is encouraged, and decision making under
uncertainty is common.

Individual vs. Group Rewards

In some countries, personnel who do outstanding work are given individual rewards in bonuses
and commissions. In others, cultural norms require group rewards, and individual rewards are
frowned on.

Informal vs. Formal Procedures

In some societies, much is accomplished through informal means. In others, formal procedures
are set forth and followed rigidly.

Cooperation vs. Competition

Some societies encourage cooperation between their people. Others encourage competition
between their people.
 High Vs. Low Organizational Loyalty

In some societies, people identify very strongly with their organization or employer. In others,
people identify with their occupational groups, such as an engineer or mechanics.

Short-term vs. Long-term Horizons

Some cultures focus most heavily on short-term horizons, such as short-range goals of profit
and efficiency. Others are more interested in long-range goals, such as market share and
technological development.

Stability vs. Innovation

The culture of some countries encourages stability and resistance to change. The culture of
others puts a high value on innovation and change.

Goals and Objectives

The culture of the organization is also affected by its goals and objectives. The strategies and
procedures designed to achieve this organization’s goals and objectives also contribute to its
culture.

Others:

 Language and dialect

 Religion
 Wealth
 Climate and weather
 Dress sense and clothes-fashion
 Level of education and literacy
 General living standards
 Employment regulations

These cultural differences influence the way that comparative management should be
conducted.

Sometimes these factors affect international business because some international managers are
unknown and unfamiliar with these factors and day to day business protocol.

Importance of the Cultural Study

The influence of society’s religious, family, educational, and social system on consumers’
behavior and their impacts on marketing comprise a company’s cultural environment. It would
be difficult to overlook the importance of culture as a motivator of consumer behavior.
While it is easy to state the general significance of culture, it is more difficult to define the term
to receive general acceptance.

Consequently, it is hard to be precise about the impacts of culture on consumer behavior.

Cultural dimensions among countries vary even more than economic dimensions, so that it
becomes difficult at best to find general patterns.

For example, even though Western European countries’ economic characteristics are similar,
their cultural dimensions make for very different eating habits.

Certainly, culture is the most pervasive external force on an individual’s consumption behavior
how people work and play, what they eat, how they eat, how and what they buy, and the cultural
traditions and socially developed modes of behavior are all affected.

Even a slight change in them can significantly alter how and what people buy.

For example, in the US, in the early 1980s, some religious groups began a movement to boycott
products promoted on certain highly popular but “immoral” (sex-oriented) Consumer Behavior
Television shows. Over 6000 churches joined the movement, and some companies agreed to
cease their advertising on those shows.

Marketing executives must consider the importance of the cultural setting within which
consumer behavior takes place. The attitudes people possess, the values they hold dear, the
lifestyles they enjoy, and the interpersonal behavioral patterns they adopt are the outcomes of
the cultural setting.

These forces affect the marketplace by influencing other external forces. They undoubtedly have
a bearing on government standards, the state of the economy, and the intensity of competition
and technological development. You should keep in mind that cultures vary from country to
country, and as a result, consumption patterns among people vary.

Failure to carefully consider cultural differences is often responsible for monumental marketing
failures. In fact, it has been convincingly argued that the root cause of most international
business problems is the selfreference criteria, i.e., the unconscious reference to one’s own
cultural values.

Marketing across cultural boundaries is a challenging and difficult task. You know that consumer
behavior always takes place within a specific environment, and an individual’s culture provides
the most general environment in which his consumption behavior takes place.

Cultural influences have broad effects on buying behavior because they permeate our daily lives.
Our culture determines what we wear and eat, where we reside and travel. It broadly affects how
we buy and use products, and it influences our satisfaction with them.

For example, in our urban culture, time scarcity increases because of the increase in the number
of females who work. Because of the current emphasis, we place on physical and mental self-
development. Many people do time-saving shopping and buy time-saving products, such as
instant noodles, to cope with time scarcity.

Since culture, to some degree, determines how products are purchased and used, it, in turn,
affects the development, promotion, distribution, and pricing of products.

From the premise given above, it is now quite evident that the study of the market’s culture
where you operate or plan to operate is vital for your success and even existence.

Understanding culture is important to you as a marketing manager because it always provides

approved specific goal objects for any generalized human want.

Final Words

Culture is a comprehensive concept that includes almost everything around us and influences an
individual’s thought processes and behavior. It would be difficult for a marketer to succeed if he
overlooks culture’s importance as an indicator of behavior.

So, it is a must for marketing executives, business executives, entrepreneurs, decision-makers to

consider the importance of the cultural setting within which consumer behavior occurs.

Popular culture :
Popular culture is the set of practices, beliefs, and objects that embody the most broadly
shared meanings of a social system. It includes media objects, entertainment and
leisure, fashion and trends, and linguistic conventions, among other things. Popular
culture is usually associated with either mass culture or folk culture, and differentiated
from high culture and various institutional cultures (political culture, educational culture,
legal culture, etc.). The association of popular culture with mass culture leads to a focus
on the position of popular culture within a capitalist mode of economic production.
Through this economic lens, popular culture is seen as a set of commodities produced
through capitalistic processes driven by a profit motive and sold to consumers. In
contrast, the association of popular culture with folk culture leads to a focus on
subcultures such as youth cultures or ethnic cultures. Through this subculture lens,
popular culture is seen as a set of practices by artists or other kinds of culture makers
that result in performances and objects that are received and interpreted by audiences,
both within and beyond the subcultural group. Holistic approaches examine the ways
that popular culture begins as the collective creation of a subculture and is then
appropriated by the market system. Key issues in the sociological analysis of popular
culture include the representation of specific groups and themes in the content of
cultural objects or practices, the role of cultural production as a form of social
reproduction, and the extent to which audiences exercise agency in determining the
meanings of the culture that they consume.
{In simple words, popular culture can be understood as a set of cultural products, practices, beliefs, and
objects dominating society. It affects and influences the people it comes across towards these sets of
objects or beliefs. From music to dance, movies, literature, fashion, it encompasses everything that is
believed and consumed by the majority of people in any society.

Coined in the 19th century, the term popular culture is complex and hard to define. It depends on the
context it has been used or on the people who are using it. Viewed literally, it means the culture of the
people. Being the culture of the people, it generated through the day to day interactions people engage in,
the language they use, the beliefs they hold, the rituals they follow, etc. Historically, it used to be equated
with the culture of the poor, and lower classes which were uneducated thus projecting it as an inferior
culture against the upper official classes having higher education. This distinction became more
prominent during the late 19th century.

According to John Storey, “popular culture is the culture that is left over, after we have decided what is
high culture” (Storey 2009, p. 6). After the world war, growing social changes and evolving media and
technology associated it with that of media culture, image culture, consumer culture, music culture and so
on. The use of the term pop in place of popular also shows the influence music culture had on popular
culture. However, the term pop is narrower than that of popular. The author John Storey argued that the
coming of the industrial revolution and urbanization led to its development. It is constantly evolving and
reaching wide areas due to the improvement of mass media in modern times.

The importance of popular culture is seen in the way it impacts society. In influences peoples’ choices,
the clothes they wear, the food they eat, the music they listen to. There exist two views about its meaning.
It brings a large number of heterogeneous people coming for differing social backgrounds to see
themselves as a collective unit, a social group. It unites the people playing an inclusionary role and gives
them a sense of identity. It not only provides self-satisfaction but also helps in building a communal
bonding.

One view sees popular culture as a tool by which the elites try to influence and control the lower class of
uneducated masses by gaining control over the mass media and other ventures of popular culture. It is
said that through this culture, the elites divert the people away from the important issues to gain benefits
in their favor. The other which is completely in contrast to this is the view that it is the weapon through
which the subordinate and lower classes or groups engage in rebellion against the dominant groups.

The idea of popular culture can be spread through or generate from various sources including films,
television programs, pop music, sports, books, radio, games and sports, the internet, etc .}

High Culture:
The terms high culture and popular culture – like their synonyms highbrow
and lowbrow culture – imply a hierarchy of cultural forms. A sociological
approach to high culture stresses that what qualifies as high culture does
not ensue from intrinsic aesthetic superiority. Instead, sociological studies
focus on the social origins of the distinction between high culture and
popular culture and, in this way, “unmask” high culture by revealing the
social processes that attach the claim of superiority to it. Claims of
superiority seem at odds with the contemporary emphasis on tolerance for
cultural diversity. However, despite trends toward greater tolerance, the
category high culture remains of paramount importance to how culture is
understood in society.
{High culture is a subculture that emphasizes and encompasses the cultural objects of
aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as exemplary art,[1] and
the intellectual works of philosophy, history, art, and literature that a society consider
representative of their culture.[2]}

 FOLK CULTURE
The term folk tends to evoke images of what we perceive to be traditional costumes, dances, and music. It
seems that anything with the prefix folk refers to something that somehow belongs in the past and that is
relegated to festivals and museums. The word folk can be traced back to Old Norse/English/Germanic and
was used to refer to an army, a clan, or a group of people. Using this historic information, folk culture
(folktales, folklore, etc.) can be understood as something that is shared first among a group of people and
then with the more general population. It is a form of identification. Folk is ultimately tied to an original
landscape/geographic location as well. Folk cultures are found in small, homogeneous groups. Because of
this, folk culture is stable through time, but highly variable across space.
Folk customs originate in the distant past and change slowly over time. Folk cultures move across space
by relocation diffusion, as groups move they bring their cultural items, as well as their ideas with them.
Folk culture is transmitted or diffused in person. Knowledge is transmitted either by speaking to others, or
through participating in an activity until it has been mastered. Cooking food is taught by helping others
until an individual is ready to start cooking. Building a house is learned through participating in the
construction of houses. In all cases, folk cultures must learn to use the resources that are locally available.
Over time folk cultures learn functional ways to meet daily needs as well as satisfy desires for meaning
and entertainment. Folk cultures produce distinctive ways to address problems.
Houses tend to be similar within a culture area, since once a functional house type is developed, there is
little incentive to experiment with something that may not work. Food must be grown or gathered locally.
People prefer variety, so they produce many crops, plus relying on only a few foods is dangerous.
Clothing is made from local wool, flax, hides, or other materials immediately available. Local plants
serve as the basis of folk medicinal systems. People are entertained by music that reinforces folk beliefs
and mythologies, as well as reflects daily life. Folktales or folklore exists as foundational myths, origin
stories or cautionary tales.
Holidays provide another form of entertainment. Special days break the monotony of daily life. A holiday
such as Mardi Gras, which has its roots in the Catholic calendar provides an occasion to flout cultural
norms and relieve tension. Another way of providing escape from monotony is provided by intoxicants.
Although often not considered when discussing culture, human beings have been altering their own
mental states for millennia. The production of alcohol, cannabis, tobacco or coca demonstrates that folk
cultures understood the properties of psychoactive substances. Later these substances would be
commercialized into modern products.
As folk cultures have receded there has been a return to valuing the folk. The Slow-food movement and
the growth of cultural tourism has largely been driven for the desire experience elements of folk culture.
As early as the German Grimm Brothers (19th century Germany) people have wanted to preserve and
promote folk culture. John Lomax (1867-1948) traveled the United States trying to record as many folk
songs and folk tales (including slave narratives) as they faded from human memory.
Folk culture can also be expressed as craftsmanship versus factory work. Hand production of goods
requires a great amount of knowledge to select materials, fabricate components, assemble and finish a
product. Contrast this with industrial production in workers need to know very little about the final
product, and have little relationship with it. This difference in modes of production was first discussed by
Ferdinand Tönnies and Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. These two words denote the relationship between
people and their communities, and by extension, their landscapes. Gesellschaft is the way life is lived in a
small community. Gemeinschaft is the way that life is lived in a larger society.

Mass Culture :
Mass culture emerged in the years following the industrial revolution. The
concept of mass culture defines all the power, behaviors, mythos, and
phenomena which are difficult to resist and which are produced by
industrial techniques and spread to a very large masses. Mass
culture products are standard cultural products produced and transmitted
by mass media only for the mass market.

Generally refers to media-driven cultural practices within modern

“mass societies” which arose in tandem with techniques
of mass production and commercial advertising. Culture is understood to
be “manufactured” according to market imperatives rather than arising
spontaneously from within the localized community.

Low culture
"Low culture" is a derogatory term for forms of popular culture that have mass appeal.
Its contrast is "high culture", which can also be derogatory. It has been said by culture
theorists that both high culture and low culture are subcultures. Popular culture is mass
produced by what has been called by socialist culture analyst Theodor Adorno the
"culture industry".[5]
Low culture can be classified as anything opposite of high culture. That
definition might seem like it's just too easy, but it's true. Low culture is anything
that high culture isn't. (Redefinition.) Low culture is reserved for the lower and
working classes. It doesn't make the material less important, it just isn't held at
as high of a standard. Low culture often deals with many elements of grunge
and dirty-ness, and it is common and in our everyday lives. Pop culture has also
been discussed as a facet of low culture, because it challenges high culture by
mocking and imitating it. One example would be the way SNL handles
their political satires, they take high culture politics and bring it down to a low
culture level. Here are some examples of what society categorizes as low
culture.
UNIT:2 :
Visual Expressions :

High culture is generally used to denote forms

of culture, such as visual arts, opera, classical
music, and literature. Based on widely shared
beliefs, these forms of culture are, in contrast to
more popular forms of culture, deemed valuable
and worthy of appreciation. e ideology of
Bildung –
t h a t s e r i o u s a r t s t i m u l a t
e s i n t e l l e c -
tual development and is central to individuals’
cultivation – legitimizes the distinction made
between high and popular culture. is thinking
is visible, for example, in the cultural pessimism
of Horkheimer and Adorno (1989) who argue
that mass-produced popular culture erodes the
capacity for individual thinking, generates con-
formity, and cripples innovation and intellectual
reection. Indeed, like other proponents of the
Frankfurt School perspective, they endorse the
claim that high culture is intrinsically superior
to popular culture. Sociological work plays a key
role in debunking this view, however. Rather
than focusing on the intrinsic qualities of cul-
tural forms and subscribing to the superiority
of high culture, a sociological perspective seeks
to desacralize high culture by demonstrating the
socially constructed nature of the high culture
category. It does so by separating the material
production of cultural forms from the symbolic
production – that is, the production of value and
recognition attached to cultural products – and
by investigating the latter (Bourdieu, 1984).
rough processes of symbolic production, cul-
tural forms are assigned a position in the cultural
hierarchy and thus become included/excluded in
the high culture category. Similarly, scholars from
the Birmingham School argued that the inferior
position of popular culture ensues from issues of
power and ideology, rather than aesthetic value
per se (e.g., Hall, 1986).
How high culture and popular culture are
demarcated from one another and to what
extent they are hierarchically ordered, varies
e Blackwell Encyclopedia of
Sociology. E d i t e d b y G e o r g e R i t z e r a n d C h r i s R
ojek.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405165518.wbeos1214
across contexts (DiMaggio, 1987). e socially
constructed nature of the high culture category
becomes evident when we consider that the posi-
tion of cultural products in the cultural hierarchy
changes over time. A classic example of that
change is Shakespeare. Originally, the works of
Shakespeare were considered popular culture as
they were appreciated and consumed by a socially
heterogeneous audience. From the nineteenth
century on, however, Shakespeare’s works were
sacralized through reinterpretation and were
labeled high culture (Williams, 1961; Levine,
1988). Similar to other examples of aesthetic
mobility (e.g., jazz, photography, lms), their
altered position in the cultural hierarchy demon-
strates the contingency of the position cultural
formsareawardedintheculturalhier
archy.
Processes in the sphere of cultural consump-
tion and cultural production shape symbolic
production. It has been observed repeatedly that
cultural consumption is socially patterned, as
lower classes are vastly underrepresented in the
audience for high culture (Gans, 1974). Sociology
explains this empirical regularity by stressing that
the appreciation and consumption of high culture
requires cultural resources that are, via processes
of socialization, largely distributed among mem-
bers of the higher classes (Daenekindt and Roose,
2017). is social patterning aects cultural hier-
archies, as certain forms of culture are labeled
high culture because the higher classes consume
them (Mannheim, 1956). is social patterning,
moreover, allows culture both to become a status
markerandtobeakeymechanis
minthecon-
struction and reproduction of social inequality
(Bourdieu, 1984).
Patterns in the sphere of cultural consumption
do not suce to grant cultural hierarchies a uni-
versally valid and self-evident character. For this,
the distinction between high and popular culture
needs to be embedded in dominant institutions,
such as the state, the educational system, and
the media. e state inuences what is viewed
as high art by funding certain forms of culture
and not others. Similarly, cultural critics strongly
aect the cultural hierarchy by systematically
(dis)approving and including/excludin
forms of culture in newspaper coverage (Janssen,
Kuipers, and Verboord, 2008). e educational
system also plays a particularly inuential role by
including/excluding certain forms of culture in
curricula and, in this way, signaling which forms
of culture are worth pursuing and appropriat-
ing (Daenekindt and Roose, 2015). By infusing
certain cultural products with status, these insti-
tutions shape and propagate cultural hierarchies
and grant them legitimacy.
Many authors have argued that the processes
of symbolic production have changed radically
in line with the “historical trend toward greater
tolerance of those holding dierent values”
(Peterson and Kern, 1996: 605), which has been
observed in various western countries. is trend
has resulted in the weakening of Bildung ideology
and in the emergence of the cultural omnivore
who appreciates both high and popular culture.
is resonates with arguments about the rise
of postmodern consumerism which venerates
hybridity and the mixing of cultural objects
(Featherstone, 1991). Some authors argue that
cultural hierarchies have decayed, resulting in
cultural pluralism in which the term high cul-
ture has lost its meaning. However, empirical
research continues to demonstrate the relevance
of the high culture category. For example, while
people instinctively refrain from making claims
of superiority when discussing culture, beneath
these narratives of tolerance lie marked feelings
of superiority and snobbery (Jarness and Fried-
man, 2017). Indeed, despite trends toward greater
tolerance, cultural hierarchies and the high cul-
ture category remain relevant and crucial for
understanding the social implications of cultural
consumption and productio
High culture is generally used to denote forms
of culture, such as visual arts, opera, classical
music, and literature. Based on widely shared
beliefs, these forms of culture are, in contrast to
more popular forms of culture, deemed valuable
and worthy of appreciation. e ideology of
Bildung –
t h a t s e r i o u s a r t s t i m u l a t
e s i n t e l l e c -
tual development and is central to individuals’
cultivation – legitimizes the distinction made
between high and popular culture. is thinking
is visible, for example, in the cultural pessimism
of Horkheimer and Adorno (1989) who argue
that mass-produced popular culture erodes the
capacity for individual thinking, generates con-
formity, and cripples innovation and intellectual
reection. Indeed, like other proponents of the
Frankfurt School perspective, they endorse the
claim that high culture is intrinsically superior
to popular culture. Sociological work plays a key
role in debunking this view, however. Rather
than focusing on the intrinsic qualities of cul-
tural forms and subscribing to the superiority
of high culture, a sociological perspective seeks
to desacralize high culture by demonstrating the
socially constructed nature of the high culture
category. It does so by separating the material
production of cultural forms from the symbolic
production – that is, the production of value and
recognition attached to cultural products – and
by investigating the latter (Bourdieu, 1984).
rough processes of symbolic production, cul-
tural forms are assigned a position in the cultural
hierarchy and thus become included/excluded in
the high culture category. Similarly, scholars from
the Birmingham School argued that the inferior
position of popular culture ensues from issues of
power and ideology, rather than aesthetic value
per se (e.g., Hall, 1986).
How high culture and popular culture are
demarcated from one another and to what
extent they are hierarchically ordered, varies
e Blackwell Encyclopedia of
Sociology. E d i t e d b y G e o r g e R i t z e r a n d C h r i s R
ojek.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405165518.wbeos1214
across contexts (DiMaggio, 1987). e socially
constructed nature of the high culture category
becomes evident when we consider that the posi-
tion of cultural products in the cultural hierarchy
changes over time. A classic example of that
change is Shakespeare. Originally, the works of
Shakespeare were considered popular culture as
they were appreciated and consumed by a socially
heterogeneous audience. From the nineteenth
century on, however, Shakespeare’s works were
sacralized through reinterpretation and were
labeled high culture (Williams, 1961; Levine,
1988). Similar to other examples of aesthetic
mobility (e.g., jazz, photography, lms), their
altered position in the cultural hierarchy demon-
strates the contingency of the position cultural
formsareawardedintheculturalhier
archy.
Processes in the sphere of cultural consump-
tion and cultural production shape symbolic
production. It has been observed repeatedly that
cultural consumption is socially patterned, as
lower classes are vastly underrepresented in the
audience for high culture (Gans, 1974). Sociology
explains this empirical regularity by stressing that
the appreciation and consumption of high culture
requires cultural resources that are, via processes
of socialization, largely distributed among mem-
bers of the higher classes (Daenekindt and Roose,
2017). is social patterning aects cultural hier-
archies, as certain forms of culture are labeled
high culture because the higher classes consume
them (Mannheim, 1956). is social patterning,
moreover, allows culture both to become a status
markerandtobeakeymechanis
minthecon-
struction and reproduction of social inequality
(Bourdieu, 1984).
Patterns in the sphere of cultural consumption
do not suce to grant cultural hierarchies a uni-
versally valid and self-evident character. For this,
the distinction between high and popular culture
needs to be embedded in dominant institutions,
such as the state, the educational system, and
the media. e state inuences what is viewed
as high art by funding certain forms of culture
and not others. Similarly, cultural critics strongly
aect the cultural hierarchy by systematically
(dis)approving and incl
forms of culture in newspaper coverage (Janssen,
Kuipers, and Verboord, 2008). e educational
system also plays a particularly inuential role by
including/excluding certain forms of culture in
curricula and, in this way, signaling which forms
of culture are worth pursuing and appropriat-
ing (Daenekindt and Roose, 2015). By infusing
certain cultural products with status, these insti-
tutions shape and propagate cultural hierarchies
and grant them legitimacy.
Many authors have argued that the processes
of symbolic production have changed radically
in line with the “historical trend toward greater
tolerance of those holding dierent values”
(Peterson and Kern, 1996: 605), which has been
observed in various western countries. is trend
has resulted in the weakening of Bildung ideology
and in the emergence of the cultural omnivore
who appreciates both high and popular culture.
is resonates with arguments about the rise
of postmodern consumerism which venerates
hybridity and the mixing of cultural objects
(Featherstone, 1991). Some authors argue that
cultural hierarchies have decayed, resulting in
cultural pluralism in which the term high cul-
ture has lost its meaning. However, empirical
research continues to demonstrate the relevance
of the high culture category. For example, while
people instinctively refrain from making claims
of superiority when discussing culture, beneath
these narratives of tolerance lie marked feelings
of superiority and snobbery (Jarness and Fried-
man, 2017). Indeed, despite trends toward greater
tolerance, cultural hierarchies and the high cul-
ture category remain relevant and crucial for
understanding the social implications of cultural
consumption and produc