Track 22

Unit 4

Business

The art of marketing in a global culture

Pages 36 and 37

Listen for main ideas and listen for details

I now wanna look at an increasingly important aspect of international marketing, globalization. Globalization is the idea that as international travel and communication expand, the world’s becoming more homogenous. Different cultures are converging as people everywhere become increasingly similar in the way they live. There are the fads and fashions people follow, the products they buy, how they relax, the heroes they look up to and so on.

So as we travel around the world, we become accustomed to seeing the familiar, cybercafes, CDs of bands we love, Starbucks coffee houses, advertisements for well-known brands. In fact, you can think of plenty of other examples. Think Google, cell phones, MTV, the familiar faces of top fashion models and sporting icons, right?

Let’s consider then, first some of the causes of globalization, then let’s think about its implications for businesses looking to market their products globally. First then, the causes of globalization. Clearly flight has been a key factor here, perhaps the key factor. And as its popularity is increased, so as its affordability. Today most people travel by air. For those traveling to holiday destinations it’s the preferred way to go. That allows us to go further, quicker. And for business people, it enables them to do business face-to-face on the other side of the world and reduces time away from the office.

The resulting interaction between cultures is surely promoted shared values and attitudes. This is an important feature of globalization. Then there’s the news and entertainment industry. We can really talk about global culture without considering the huge influence of the Internet, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and film. Today, these are multi-million dollar industries and most films and documentaries, quiz shows and soap operas are made in the hope that they’ll be bought and shown around the world. Many eventually become powerful and lucrative international brands, popular TV series, or watched on every continent and have near universal appeal. Why? Well, because they’re based on common human experiences. They evoke feelings and emotions we all share.

And this brings to a key element of the news and entertainment industry and its role in helping create a global society, advertising. Ads are a common feature of television, magazines, and of course, Internet sites. Don’t you just hate those pop up windows? Advertising works through the media, driving fads and fashions. So this makes the media a potent marketing tool, see? Because it spreads ideas incredibly widely, quickly and effectively.

The third and final cause of globalization, I want to highlight as politics. I want you to think specifically about the dissolution of social and economic barriers to political activity in international agreements. Take the European Union, for example, hear a group of countries with quite different and distinctive cultures and traditions have come together in the spirit of cooperation. Many Europeans now have begun to feel that they’re members of the larger pan-European culture, increasingly heads of government, and not just in the EU, appear to be consulting and acting in unison on issues affecting the entire world. Issues like the environment, crime, world poverty etc.

Arguably these things are lessening ideological differences between nations. And because they’re reported on news channels like CNN and seen by millions, they help create a sense of pulling in the same direction. They create a feeling that there’s a common culture of humanity, if you like. Now this phenomena have created easier access to global markets sold out. But marketing’s success as measured by sales figures is not guaranteed.

And this brings me to the second part of my lecture. The implications of globalization for marketing. You know, although different markets may share common human wants and needs, marketing successfully to those wants and needs is never universal. Marketing professionals must be mindful of the local culture’s values, and buying behaviors when deciding strategy. This distinction between global and local culture is sometimes referred to in terms of the universal and the particular respectively. A product becomes a universal icon only because it has particular appeal to many individual cultures across the globe. It’s the job of the company’s regional manager to ensure that the product has local appeal.

Another challenging marketing messages across cultures is understanding different communication styles. Anthropologist make a distinction between high context and low context cultures. In high context cultures, Asian and Hispanic cultures, for instance, communication depends heavily on context. This means the nonverbal aspects of communication. In low context cultures like the US, for example, communication is more explicit than verbal. So an example, in Japan, an ads promoting a luxury car might contain very little dialogue but a lot of impressive scenery, sophisticated gadgetry and stirring music. These elements rely on the power of association. In contrast, in America, the ads emphasis might be on the spoken message explaining the technology behind the car something more explicit.

Now, as a lesson in what, not to do, let’s take a look at two examples of companies goofing up in their efforts to market their products internationally. A company tried introducing its instant coffee to France, the country where the casual image of the product didn’t fit into the French practice of preparing real coffee which is a fixed part of the French morning routine. Then there’s Campbell Soup’s was lost $30,000 in advertising in Europe before realizing the British consumers weren’t familiar with the concept of condensed soup. This particular case highlights how easily marketing departments can fall into the trap of assuming that just because two countries share language and cultural heritage, they’ll be enticed by the same message. This can be a costly miscalculation.