Cross-Cultural Marketing

Downloaded by [Mysore University] at 08:15 12 April 2013 Cross-cultural Marketing Cross-cultural marketing is an important element of the contemporary business environment. Many conventional accounts of the topic have conflated cross-cultural and cross-national marketing, but in this groundbreaking, new book, Burton argues that these generalizations have little meaning given the extent of multi-culturalism in many societies. Given the importance of new emerging markets in the Far East, Middle East, Asia and Latin America, this book raises important questions about the applicability of existing marketing theory and practice, which was originally developed using the model of Western society. An extensive range of cross-cultural marketing issues is addressed, including: • Cross-cultural consumer behaviour • Cross-cultural management practice • Promotional strategies • Product development • Distribution • Marketing research methods Cross-cultural Marketing offers a new, more complex and sophisticated approach to the important challenges for existing marketing theory and practice and their continued relevance for stakeholders. As such, it is an invaluable text for students of international and cross-cultural marketing, as well as for practitioners who wish to assess new developments in the field. Downloaded by [Mysore University] at 08:15 12 April 2013 Dawn Burton has taught sociology and marketing at leading British universities. She has written widely on cross-cultural consumer culture and has held numerous research grants in this area. She is the founding editor of the journal Marketing Theory. Her work has been published in leading journals in the fields of sociology, marketing, geography and management. Cross-cultural Marketing Theory, practice and relevance Dawn Burton Downloaded by [Mysore University] at 08:15 12 April 2013 First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2009 Dawn Burton All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Burton, Dawn, 1961– Cross-cultural marketing: theory, practice and relevance/Dawn Burton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Marketing. 2. Multiculturalism. 3. Minority consumers. I. Title. HF5415.B7763 2008 658.80089–dc22 2008017138 Downloaded by [Mysore University] at 08:15 12 April 2013 ISBN 0-203-88689-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–44892–1 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–44893–X (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–88934–7 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–44892–5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–44893–2 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–88934–3 (ebk) Contents 1 Dimensions of culture 1 2 Consumer behaviour 26 3 Products 60 4 Promotional strategies 90 5 Distribution 123 6 Internet and mobile commerce 154 7 Pricing strategies 185 8 Marketing management practice 209 9 Marketing research 238 Bibliography 270 Index 316 Downloaded by [Mysore University] at 08:15 12 April 2013 1 Dimensions of culture The focus of this chapter is to explore some of the ways that culture can be analysed within a cross-cultural marketing context. The first task is to define what culture means taking into account historical patterns of thought and the contribution of different countries in arriving at the definitions that we use today. A second theme of this chapter is to explore the notion of national culture. Using the nation as a geographical unit of analysis and equating it with a distinctive culture is widely practised in marketing. Indeed within marketing cross-cultural and cross-national are often used interchangeably in books and research papers. The idea of a national culture is a concept that is of quite recent origin and some would argue is not sophisticated enough to deal with an increasingly culturally complex world. A third theme of this chapter is to assess what has become known as the globalization of culture. The globalization of culture was an idea that gained considerable currency in the 1980s, and refers to the way that global communications networks have resulted in a homogenized world of standardized products, advertising messages, and retail formats. The widespread use of the Internet is exacerbating these tendencies resulting in the globalization culture that supersedes local cultural differences. The fourth theme of the chapter is to consider what has become known as the glocalization of culture. This approach emerged largely as a critique of the globalization thesis which is arguably something of a blunt instrument. Supporters of glocalization maintain that it is still important to engage with differentiated local markets within the context of a globalizing world. The fifth theme of this chapter is to recognize a trend around the world for countries to become more multicultural in their composition. In some respects the Downloaded by [Mysore University] at 08:15 12 April 2013 techniques used within the context of international marketing need to be used at home. Equating cross-cultural with cross-national marketing is missing the point, and in so doing is simplifying highly complex ethnoscapes comprising layers of cultural complexity. As ethnicity has become an important aspect of culture within different countries, the task of marketers has been to develop strategies that tap into this market. A sixth theme of this chapter is to engage with the issue of cosmopolitanism. The concept of cosmopolitanism was traditionally associated with well- travelled individuals from advanced nations that revelled in learning about other cultures. However, cosmopolitan consumer culture is also evident in definitions of culture. The final section explores the concept of whiteness and culture. 2 Dimensions of culture Definitions of culture Culture is an incredibly complex concept that has attracted the attention of significant numbers of academics writing about the subject from very different standpoints (Jenks 1993). Some scholars within the field of anthropology have gone so far as to argue that the concept has become so problematic that it should be replaced with something that is more concrete and manageable (Geertz 1973). Raymond Williams has been one of the most prolific writers on the topic of culture documenting its historical roots and changing definitions according to societal conditions (Williams 1983, 1993). In his text Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Williams traces the historical roots of the word ‘culture’ in several European and Scandinavian countries. Initially, the word derived from cultura that had a range of meanings including ‘inhabit, cultivate, and protect, honour with worship’ (Williams 1983: 87). By the early fifteenth century the French word culture had passed into the English language and the primary meaning was then in husbandry, associated with the tending of natural growth in either crops or animals. From the early sixteenth century the concept of tending to natural growth was extended to human beings. Culture as a noun was not common before the late eighteenth century. In eighteenth-century England, the term was often associated with civility that acquired social class associations connected to breeding and advantage. Williams cites Herder in his unfinished work entitled Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784–1791) where he criticized the notion of a superior European culture in the world and referred to cultures in the plural: ‘the specific and variable cultures of different nations and periods, but also the specific and variable cultures of social and economic groups within a nation’ (Williams 1983: 89). Initially the term culture was used to differentiate between national and traditional cultures and subsequently the concept of folk culture. There is also a distinction between definitions of culture as a process of intellectual and spiritual development, and that which focuses on a material way of life of people, periods, groups or humanity in general. A third usage has emerged that refers to intellectual, especially artistic, activity – music, literature, painting and sculpture. Differences in the usages remain in various languages. In the German, Scandinavian and Slavonic language groups, the material production emphasis is apparent, whereas in Italian and French the process of human development dominates. Cultural studies as an academic discipline is more highly developed in some Downloaded by [Mysore University] at 08:15 12 April 2013 countries than others, although its history as an academic discipline is highly contested (Werbner 2002; McGuigan 1999; Steele 1999; Carey 1997). It has a long history in Britain and the USA but is of more recent origin in South Africa (Nuttall 2006), India (Mukhopadhyay 2006), and Japan (Tumari 2006) where cultural studies can be traced to the 1980s. In Latin America there were studies of a distinctive

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