Culture is defined as the complex whole that includes
knowledge, beliefs, art, law, morals, customs, and any
other capabilities acquired by humans as members of
society. It includes almost everything that influences an
individual's thought processes and behaviors.
Culture operates primarily by setting boundaries for
individual behavior and by influencing the functioning
of such institutions as the family and mass media. The
boundaries, or norms, are derived from cultural values.
Values are widely held beliefs that affirm what is
desirable.
Cultural values are classified into three categories:
other, environment, and self. Other-oriented values reflect
a society's view of the appropriate relationships
between individuals and groups within that society. Relevant
values of this nature include individual/collective, youth/age, extended/limited family, masculine/feminine,
competitive/cooperative, and diversity/uniformity.
Environment-oriented values prescribe a society's relationships
with its economic, technical, and physical
environments. Examples of environment values are
cleanliness, performance/status, tradition/change, risk
taking/security, problem solving/fatalistic, and nature.
Self-oriented values reflect the objectives and approaches
to life that individual members of society
find desirable. These include active/passive, sensual
gratification/abstinence, material/nonmaterial, hard
work/leisure, postponed gratification/ immediate gratification,
and religious/secular.
Differences in verbal communication systems are
immediately obvious across cultures and must be taken
into account by marketers wishing to do business in
those cultures. Probably more important, however, and
certainly more difficult to recognize are nonverbal communication
systems. Major examples of nonverbal communication
variables that affect marketers are time,
space, symbols, relationships, agreements, things, and
etiquette.
There is evidence that urban teenagers around the
world share at least some aspects of a common culture.
This is driven by worldwide mass media and common
music and sports stars. Demographics describe a population
in terms of its size, structure, and distribution.
Demographics differ widely across cultures and influence
cultural values (and are influenced by them) as
well as consumption patterns.
Seven questions are relevant for developing a crosscultural
marketing strategy: (1) Is the geographic area
homogeneous or heterogeneous with respect to culture?
(2) What needs can this product fill in this culture?
(3) Can enough people afford the product? (4) What values
are relevant to the purchase and use of the product?
(5) What are the distribution, political, and legal structures
for the product? (6) How can we communicate
about the product? (7) What are the ethical implications
of marketing this product in this country?
