The Role of Culture in International Marketing
Discuss about the Dimensions of National Cultures Revisited.
When it comes to understanding the culture in business terms and operations has always been like a case study as every company deals with different cultural backgrounds when they want to establish themselves in an international Market (Caprar, et al. 2015). There have been a few critiques in this debate but culture has a significant role in the international marketing irrespective of the country. To evaluate the culture of any country, any business has to study the Hofstede Cultural Dimensions so that a detailed and profound study is been done of the market where the country want to establish or enter. A much-generalized understanding of the international marketing for the company is done when the company operates in more than one country. There is always a unique perspective of the similar activity or function to the planning, pricing, prompting and directing the flows of goods and services for earning profit. When globalization increases, the awareness about the culture also increases by companies going to learn new culture for their better establishment in a particular country (Hemalatha, Anusuyadevi and Tamilarasi 2017).
When any firm has the intention to trade in the international market, it is required to explore the countries and their cultures. Culture can be taken as the core factor for the study of the international market when it comes to very different populations. The study of the culture of any country symbolized the set of rules and norms that exist in that particular country so that a mutual understating can be done. There have been introduced many such theories and models like Ries and Trout’s definition for determining the culture of the country but some of the models do not consider the differences that exists in the cultures while positioning of the company is done in the international markets (Ahmed, Ullah and Alam 2014).
All types of organization have this ability to adapt themselves to the local markets of the country. The people who support this philosophy of adapting found that the differences in the culture between different nations are such that any work in the nation fails very badly in other. Those supporters believed that it is always very tough to grow only one marketing strategy which would have impact across the world. Hence, this type of adaption actually helps the marketers in taking the differences into account and then allows the local trade with the type of marketing strategies which attracts them and will also prove to be more effective when it functions and at last will create great profits. For Example: If a country India is considered, if the country is looking for non alcoholic beverages, a type of different competitive advantage is developed for itself to fulfill the needs of the country and receive a well known name in the Indian market.
Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
Standardization misses the advantages that adaption actually has and the same happens vice versa. If both standardization and adaption is taken into picture and compared, the debate is not really important but the grey area is there which exists in between the two and this grey area is known as Glocalisation. It actually displays the philosophy of “think global and act local”.
If cross cultural international marketing is considered, one of the common theories used is Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. There are several dimensions which helps in knowing the culture of the country and can easily be compared with the other countries if the company want to establish itself in more than one country at the same time. It focuses on the identification of the individualism, power distance, UAI (Uncertainly avoidance index), masculinity and feminism and Confucian dynamism. All such dimensions help the firm in identifying and giving details of the cross cultural differences which exists in the behavior of the consumer.
For determining the role of culture in various countries in international market, these cultural dimensions should be studies in the details.
Individualism and Collectivism: The definition of individualism is explained as the link between the individual and the society or a group of people. While in a country if there is high individualism and self interests in the community, the individuals are expected to look after themselves and they would not be dependent on any other person and not even their family. When the individualism is low, people will always be dependent on the society or other people and conform to other’s feelings (Rinuastuti, et al. 2014).
Power Distance: Individuals do not have equal physical and intellectual capabilities when some of the societies are concerned in a country which allows inequality in terms of power and health. Every society will have such inequalities in the world and some will always be more powerful as competed to others. This always refers to the inequality. If the power distance of the country is on the higher side, the indicator shows that people have this belief that every single person has a place with rights and all of them actually understand that everyone cannot be considered as powerful (Afaneh, et al. 2014).
UAI: Uncertainty avoidance always refers to the level of the anxiousness of the people as to anything uncertain could happen in the society and if they will not be ready for it. When the display of fear or anxiousness is more in avoidance, the societies try to change the prospect of the future by creating new rules and norms. If the index is low, the avoidance involves people who are open to take risks and they are always ready for the future uncertainties (Hofstede 2009).
Risk Analysis for International Market Entry
Masculinity: In the major number of the countries, men are the ones who tend to be more dominating as compared to the women on the countries. The behaviors of the men are referred to be linked with the autonomy, aggressiveness and dominance whereas females behave in a way which links with the humility, nurturance and affiliation. Both these masculinity and femininity refers to the male and female characteristics basically (Yoo, Donthu and Lenartowicz 2011).
Confucian Dynamism: This dimension refers to the degree in which they are universalistic and particularistic. Universal means the thins which are true and can easily be applied everywhere and particularistic means that the one of a kind relations and situations are at a significant space to identify what is right instead of the abstract rules (Yeh and Lawrence 1995).
When any company wants to be established in any of the international markets, the company risk analysis is also very important factor which helps the firms to establish in the new market. The factors are:
Political Risks: There are some government laws which the company will have o abide by. Then only it will be able to flourish as government laws and policies are important when they are followed by the customers of that particular nation.
Economic Risks: A detailed study is needed to be done about the economy of the nation where the company wants to be established. The study factors should be inflation rates, growing economy or not, what are the exchange rates etc. Cost benefit is also important.
Operational Risks: Sometimes, the company launches itself but aren’t able to find the better suppliers or infrastructure. This causes big loss to the companies. When and where to buy raw materials and where to sustain in terms of the location is important.
Competitive Risks: Each firm has its competitors irrespective of the place and market. A deep study about the competitors and their supplies should be done in order to sustain the market and overpowering the competition.
Managerial Implications: To understand the cultural dimension with respect to the international marketing is a very significant step but the findings does not directly apply for managers as the firms execute the strategies by country. Also, the impacts of culture on International marketing have many dimensions such that the cultural dimensions have countervailing impacts which makes the complete effects in any country is not clear (Samaha, Beck and Palmatier 2014).
Managerial Implications
Theoretical Implications: With the execution of the impacts of multiple dimensions all over the huge sample of the international studies, the contribution to the IM theory is contributed by the researchers. Firstly, the researchers support four prudent beliefs that give the short theoretical details for when every dimension matters the most and also with the reasons. The findings provides the guidance for the selection of the apt cultural dimensions which depends upon the character of the international marketing links as it is mostly not theoretically feasible to involve all the dimensions.
Example: The best example of the cultural dimensions could be Korean culture as just like any other culture, it is also influenced by the globalization. In the year 2006, Shin was stressed with the fact that globalization in South Korea is the survival of two trends which contradicts themselves. Those trends were between nationalist appropriation of globalization and intensification of ethnic identity. All aspects of life have undergone changes starting with the family, moving on to the educational system and the society as a whole. With that study of dimensions, it was found out that this country had enormous capacity for the change (Buja 2016) (Denis 1993).
This essay focuses on the role of the culture in international marketing especially when globalization is taking place in the whole world and very quickly. The study of the cultural dimensions should always be done by every company or firm before they want to establish themselves in any foreign country (Ocansey 2017). There is a lot of research done on the countries like Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, India etc as they are the developed and growing market countries where most of the countries want to establish their business. To study the culture of different countries, various theories are adopted but the most important theories which is used these days are Greet Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory which helps in studying of the cultures of each and every country in details. The detailed study of these dimensions is done in this essay so as to explain the benefits of using these dimensions. Also there are some implications which might occur in implementing these dimensions are discussed. In the end, it can be concluded that culture is really very important to study for every organization as it gives a sketch of the customers the company is going to target and a little idea as to how the company will gain profit.
References
Afaneh, Jihad Abdullah, Mousa Ahmad Khaireddin, Ghalib Mahmoud Sanjuq, and Jalal Barham Qaddoumi. “Impact of cultural dimensions according to hofstede model on organizational commitment of the middle management at jordanian private universities.” European Journal of Business and Social Sciences 3, no. 9 (2014).
Ahmed, Manzoor, Shafi Ullah, and Aftab Alam. “Importance of Culture in Success of International Marketing.” European Academic Research 1, no. 10 (2014).
Buja, Elena. “Hofstede’s Dimensions of National Cultures Revisited: A Case Study of South Korea’s Culture.” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica 8, no. 1 (2016): 169-182.
Caprar, Dan V., Timothy M. Devinney, Bradley L. Kirkman, and Paula Caligiuri. “Conceptualizing and measuring culture in international business and management: From challenges to potential solutions.” Journal of International Business Studies 46, no. 9 (2015): 1011-1027.
Denis, Jean Emile. “Culture and International Marketing Mix Decisions.” https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu. 1993. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.201.168&rep=rep1&type=pdf (accessed May 29, 2018).
Hemalatha, G., P. Anusuyadevi, and S. Tamilarasi. “The Cultural Impact On International Marketing Strategy, With A Special Emphasis Of Retail Perspective.” SSRG International Journal of Economics and Management Studies, 2017.
Hofstede, Geert. “Dimensionalizing cultures: the hofstede model in context.” Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2009.
Ocansey, Evans. “The Influence of Culture on Global Marketing Strategies: A Confirmatory Study.” The International Jouranl of Management and Business 5, no. 10 (2017).
Rinuastuti, Handayani, Djumilah Hadiwidjojo, Fatchur Rohman, and Nur Khusniyah. “Measuring Hofstede?s Five Cultural Dimensions at Individual Level and Its Application to Researchers in Tourists? Behaviors.” International Business Research 7, no. 12 (2014).
Samaha, Stephen A., Joshua T. Beck, and Robert W. Palmatier. “The Role of Culture in International Relationship Marketing.” Journal of Marketing 78 (2014): 78-98.
Yeh, Ryh song, and John J. Lawrence. “Individualism and Confucian Dynamism: A Note on Hofstede’s Cultural Root to Economic Growth.” Journal of International Business Studies 26, no. 3 (1995): 655-669.
Yoo, Boonghee, Naveen Donthu, and Tomasz Lenartowicz. “Measuring Hofstede’s Five Dimensions of Cultural Values at the Individual Level: Development and Validation of CVSCALE.” Researchgate, 2011.
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