Lecture Twenty: Culture & Marketing

For this lecture we focused on Culture and the hidden importance of culture in everything we do; after all it is a way of life for a group of people in which the behaviours, beliefs, values, symbols and objects that they accept are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. This is the way I understand it to be and more for me is I think that Culture oversees everything; that is the economy, the Government, Education Systems, Institutions, ideas and products but at the same time is affected by these factors. I did find to my surprise that Solomon also agrees with this theory on the power of culture as he mentions that "the effects of culture on consumers behaviour are so powerful and far-reaching that this importance is sometimes difficult to grasp or appreciate." Solomon et al. (2006).

I think the main thing to think about is that Culture is created through groups; yes individuals will make decisions and choose certain paths based on their cultural background, but the Culture was created from a mix of family and society's values systems, the groups perceptions about right and wrong and finally the collective learning and experience of the group. This however does not mean that Culture is fixed... it evolves, it learns and reflects. For example how has the face of Western Culture changed since the 9/11 tragedy or the recent Global Recession; Culture is prone to change, to look and old and new experiences and syncing them together.

To make more sense of Culture we need to think of it as a Cultural System. From this it can be broken down to 3 functional areas, these are:

• Ecology: How it is adapted to it's habitat and is controlled by the types of technology used to obtain and distribute resources. For example Highly Developed Countries vs. Low Developed Countries.


• Social Structure: The way in which social life is ordered and maintained, including domestic and political groups. For example UK households may contain 3-4 children but a Chinese home wont because of their social system.


• Ideology: This is where the mentallity of the individual relates to that of the environment and the social groups within that environment. Thinking that people will hold the same world view, morals etc.

Now this looks at Culture from a purely systematic view but there is another way to look at culture and that is from it's essential make-up; again with 3 parts:

• Beliefs: This is the way in which our Mental and Verbal processes reflect our knowledge and assessment of products and/or services. For example if a car salesman yes a car is green, our belief is that it will be environmentally friendly.


• Values: Serve as a set of guidelines that consumers use to determine what is, and more importantly what is not appropriate behaviour. They tent to be very stable and long term and are often shared and accepted by members of a particular market.


• Customs: This is essentially ways of behaving in specific situations which are approved by the culture. For example shaking someone's hand in a business meeting, being prompt for an interview etc.

So as you can see Culture is a very large aspect of consumer behaviour and is the largest factor that influences a consumers behaviour. You can see why though with the sheer size and complexity of Culture.

Now because of its huge influence on a consumer's behaviour marketers have to take the culture of where their market is very seriously. A great example from which I learned the importance of this is with another class where we had to come up with an appropriate agency name; eventually we came up with "Jujiccu" and we were all happy etc but the brief applied to a agency that would also be known in Europe; this proved as a problem as in Spain the letter j is silent and pronounced "hu" so our agency would be known as "huhuiccu" .... doesn't have the same ring does it. So as I was saying marketers have to take consideration with culture. This can include brand names, the slogan of the brand, the colours used etc and even the smallest error in any of these could be fatal to any brand and its identity. Here are some examples of 20 terrible product names.

There is also 2 types of culture. High and Popular. High Culture refers to things only reserved for the elite ... Opera's, Expensive Art etc and are valued highly by the upper classes whereas Popular Culture is something that applies to all classes such as television, radio or internet.

I think really that Culture is a very broad subject and I could delve deeper but would just loose sight of its effects within marketing. As I have already put forward I do think that Culture oversees everything else in society but at the same time uses the experiences and knowledge obtained from all these subsections to evolve and move on. With that it is of up most importance for marketers not just to take into account our culture but other cultures as well as this information is invaluable when it comes to launching a brand and getting the message across successfully... after all marketing is all about communication to the masses.