INTERNATIONAL

MARKETING
MANAGEMENT
CULTURAL ISSUES AND BUYING
BEHAVIOR
 CHAPTER OVERVIEW
1. Definition of culture.
2. Elements of culture.
3. Cross-Cultural Comparisons
4. Adapting to Cultures
5. Cultures and the Marketing Mix
 INTRODUCTION
• Buyer behavior and consumer needs are largely driven by
cultural norms.
• Global business means dealing with consumers, strategic
partners, distributors and competitors with different
cultural mindsets.
• Within a given culture, consumption processes can include
four stages:
1. Access
2. Buying behavior
3. Consumption characteristics
4. Disposal
• Each of these stages is heavily influenced by the culture in
which the consumer thrives.
A-B-C-D PARADIGM
THE NORTH FACE
“GO WILD”
CAMPAIGN

• China, North Face’s has grown,

well beyond the firm’s expectation

• Illustrates cultural norm

• values
CULTURAL MISTAKES

• UAE 40th Anniversary

Puma launched a limited edition

shoe draped in the colors of the
country’s flag.

The shoe has tripped the wrong

sentiments with the Emiratis who
are upset about their flag being
used as inspiration for a shoe.
As a global business manager you should be aware of
your own cultural norms and other people’s cultural
mindset.
 1. DEFINITION OF CULTURE
• There are numerous definitions of culture. In this text,
culture (in a business setting) is defined as being a
learned, shared, compelling, interrelated set of
symbols whose meaning provide a set of orientations
for members of society.

• Cultures may be defined by national borders,

especially when countries are isolated by natural
barriers.

Culture contains sub cultures that have little in common

with one another.
 2. ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
Culture consists of many interrelated components.
Knowledge of a culture requires a deep understanding of its
different parts. Following are the elements of culture:

• Material Life
• Language
• Social Interaction
• Aesthetics
• Religion
• Education
• Value System
 2. ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
MATERIAL LIFE
Technologies that are used to produce, distribute, and
consume goods and services).
LANGUAGE
Is a system of symbols that allows people to
communicate with one another.
important for communication and passing on traditions
and belief
1.Vocabulary. Go for the simplest words (e.g., use the word rich instead of loaded,

affluent, or opulent). Treat colloquial words with care.

2. Idioms. Pick and choose idioms carefully (for instance, most non-U.S. speakers

would not grasp the meaning of the expression nickel-and-diming).

3. Grammar. Express one idea in each sentence. Avoid subclauses.

4. Cultural references. Avoid culture-specific references (e.g., ‘‘Doesn’t he look like

David Letterman?’’).

5. Understanding the foreigner. This will be a matter of unpicking someone’s accent. If

you do not understand, make it seem that it is you, not the foreigner, who is slow
 2. ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
SOCIAL INTERACTION
(social interactions among people; nuclear family;
reference groups)
AESTHETICS
Ideas and perceptions that a culture upholds in terms of
beauty and good taste
RELIGION
Community’s set of beliefs relating to a reality
that cannot be verified empirically.
EDUCATION
one of the major vehicles to channel from one
generation to the next.
VALUE SYSTEM
Values shape people’s norms and standards
 3. CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON
• Cultures differ from one another but usually share
certain aspects. Getting a sense of the similarities and
dissimilarities between your culture and the host
country’s culture is useful for scores of reasons.
• High-context cultures are those that communicate in
ways that are implicit and rely heavily on context;
e.g., China, Korea, Japan.
• Low-context cultures rely on explicit verbal
communication; e.g., USA, Scandinavia, Germany.
 CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON

• Geert Hofstede's Cultural Classification Scheme:

• Power distance – The degree of inequality among

people that is viewed as being equitable.

• Uncertainty Avoidance- The extent to which

people in a given culture prefer structured
situations with clear rules over unstructured ones.
 CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON
• Individualism- The degree to which people prefer to
act as individuals rather than group members.

• Masculinity – The importance of “male” values

(assertiveness, success, competitive drive,
achievement) versus “female” values (solidarity,
quality of life)

• Long-term orientation versus short-term focus –

Future versus past and present orientations.
 CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON

• The remaining six dimensions include:

Collectivism II, gender egalitarianism, assertiveness,
future orientation, performance orientation, and
humane orientation.

• World Value Survey

• The WVS is organized by the University of
Michigan.
• The WVS has been conducted multiple times
and population covered is much broader than in
other similar studies.
 CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON
• The WVS encompasses two broad categories:
Traditional versus secular values, and the quality of life
 CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON

• Project GLOBE (Global Leadership and

Organizational Behavior Effectiveness)

• Project Globe is a large-scale ongoing research project

that explores cultural values and their impact on
organizational leadership in 62 countries.

• The first three dimensions (uncertainty avoidance,

power distance, collectivism) are the same as Hofstede’s
constructs.
 4.ADAPTING TO CULTURE
• To function in the global marketplace, you need to
become sensitive to cultural biases that influence
your thinking, behavior, and decision-making
• Cultural adaptation in the way you do business is
essential for companies operating in foreign markets
with cultures different from that of the United States.
adaptation efforts must take place in all major areas
of company activity for them to be effective.
• Adaptation enables your company to succeed in
individual markets by developing a thorough
understanding of local requirements and modifying
different aspects of your marketing strategy.
• cultural adaptation is absolutely necessary to make
marketing decisions inline with the host culture. Such
adaptation is hampered by the tendency to use a self-
reference criterion (SRC), a term coined by J. A. Lee, a
cultural anthropologist.
• Self-reference criterion(SRC) :refers to people’s
unconscious tendency to resort to their own cultural
experience and value systems to interpret a given
business situation.
• Ethnocentrism refers to the feeling of one’s own
cultural superiority.
• The four-step correction mechanism goes as follows:
• Step 1: Define the business problem or goal in terms of your
own cultural traits, customs, or values.
• Step 2: Define the business problem or goal in terms of the
host culture’s traits, customs, or values.
• Step 3: Isolate the SRC influence in the problem and examine it
scrupulously to see how it interferes with the business
problem.
• Step 4: Redefine the business problem, but this time without
the SRC influence, and solve for the ‘‘optimal’’ business goal
situation.
 5.CULTURE AND MARKETING MIX

• Culture is a key pillar of the marketplace. The

success of international marketing activities is to a
large extent driven by the local culture. These
cultural variables may act as barriers or
opportunities
• Product Policy – Certain products are more culture-
bound than other products. Food, beverage, and
clothing products tend to be very culture-bound.
• Pricing – Pricing policies are driven by four Cs:
• Customers
• Company (cost, objectives, strategy)
• Competition
• Collaborators (e.g., distributors)
 CULTURE AND MARKETING MIX

• Distribution – is the process of making a product or

service available for the consumer or business user
who needs it.

• Promotions - refers to any type of marketing

communication used to inform or persuade target
audiences of the relative merits of a product, service,
brand or issue. ... It is one of the basic elements of the
market mix, which includes the four P's ,i.e., Product,
Price, Place, Promotion.
 PREVENTING HIV/AIDS IN MYANMAN
• Population service int’l ( PSI )- is a non-profit organization based
in Washington, D.C. For the first 16 years after its founding in
1970, PSI concentrated on the area of family planning through
social marketing. In the late 1980s, PSI has also entered the areas
of malaria and HIV/AIDS prevention.
• Apart from pricing, promotion is a major challenge. When PSI first
imported condoms in Myanmar, the brand name was written in
Burmese. However, PSI found out that the Burmese associated
Burmese-language packaging with inferior quality. In 1998, PSI
changed to Aphaw (‘‘trusted companion’’) in English, with usage
instructions in Burmese.
• . PSI developed its own advertising mascot: a chameleon (a
‘‘pothinnyo’’) wearing a traditional sun hat. These days, PSI’s
mascot has an 82 percent recognition among urban Burmese. PSI
collaborated with cultural troupes to produce traveling theatrical
performances to educated communities about the risks of
HIV/AIDS.
• International adapts marketing tools to local Burmese tastes to
make condoms acceptable in Myanmar.
 Thank you!

Kotabe & Helsen's (2015), International Marketing, Sixth Edition