Culture

Nowadays, firms are becoming more and more global. However, are consumers becoming global too?

“Human beings are not born with a set of behaviour, they have to learnit. What they learn is dictated by the culture into which they are born or within which they grow up” – J Bareham (1995)

Culture makes us similar to some people but different to the vastmajority. Culture is defined as a shared set of practices or beliefs among a group of people in a particular place and time ( Cray, 1998).  The diversity among cultures is reflected not only in management but also in marketing and consumer behavior and it can take some getting used to.Marketers, analysts and consumers themselves use an awareness of culture to learn how and why consumers in a particular culture behave the way they do.
The diagram below presents a general description of the concept Culture .  It answers the question that asks, what is culture? 

Culture explains why some products sell well in certain regions or among specific groups, but not as well elsewhere. Culture also affects how consumers use the products they purchase and how they dispose of them. It helps marketers position their products differently in each market. (Terpstra,2000). Consumers can examine how members of other cultures use the same products, or fulfill the same needs with different products, as a way to find more efficient, cost-effective options in the marketplace. It is very important to understand the local culture of the population of a particular area, city, country, eg: if the product does not confirm to the local culture it may not find any buyers.The growing child acquires a set of values, perceptions, preferences, and behavior through his or hr family or other key institutions.

Different perspectives exist in different cultures on several issues; e.g.:

• Symbols differ in meaning. For example, while white symbolsmeans purity in the U.S., and a symbol of death in China. Colors that are considered masculine and feminine also differ by culture.
•  Religion; In 2005 France's Catholic Church won a court injunction to ban a clothing advertisement (by clothing designers Marithe and Francois Girbaud) based upon Leonardo da Vinci's Christ's Last Supper.
• All the ads about Christmas and other Christian festivities. In an Arab country, you can't expect a middle-aged devote Muslim to be favorably impressed by Santa and his deers drinking Coca-Cola; neither could you think about a Coke-drinking Muhammad as a valid substitute. They would kill you for such a blasphemy!

Table below ndicate that all cultural elements such as language, religiousbeliefs, ethnic values and aesthetics exerted considerable influence on marketingstrategies.

 The Influence Of Culture  On Advertising

Consumers are accustomed to the value systems, beliefs and perception processes in the particular cultures in

which they grow up. That is why  marketers should understand the fundamentally different values, norms and characteristics in different cultures.

Indian advertisements:

Japanese advertisements  :

US Advertisement :

The Most Common Cross-Cultural Gestures

Europe and North America: OK Mediterranean region, Russia, Brazil, Turkey: An orifice signal; sexual insult; gay man Tunisia, France, Belgium: Zero; worthless Japan : money; coins In the 1950s, before he became President, Richard Nixon visited Latin America on a goodwill tour to try to patch up strained relations with the locals. As he stepped out of his plane he showed the waiting crowds the American 'OK' signal and was stunned as they began booing and hissing at him Being unaware of local body language customs, Nixon's OK signal had been read as 'You're all a bunch of arseholes.' The Thumb-Up  Europe: One Australia: Sit on this! (upward jerk) Widespread: Hitchhike; Good; OK Greece: Up yours! (thrust forward) Japan: Man; five         source :  westsidetoastmasters.com

Take the Cultural Test

How aware are you of cultural differences in body language?
Try this exercise — hold up your main hand to display the number five - do it now.
Now change it to the number two.

If you're Anglo-Saxon, there's a 96% chance you'll be holding up your middle and index fingers.
If you're European, there's a 94% chance you'll be holding up your thumb and index finger.

Europeans start counting with the number one on the thumb, two on the index finger, three on the middle finger, and so on. Anglo-Saxons count number one on the index finger, two on the middle finger and finish with five on the thumb.

References

Cray, D. & Mallory, Geoffrey R. 1998, Making Sense of Managing Culture. London: International Thompson Business Press.

Terpstra, V. and Sarathy, R. (2000) International Marketing, 8th Edition, Dryden Press.

westsidetoastmaster,  CULTURAL DIFFERENCES [online] Available from :

http://westsidetoastmasters.com/resources/book_of_body_language/chap5.html  [Accessed : 4.05.2011]

Social Class

This weeks lecture was all about how 'Social Class' influences the consumer's purchase behaviour. What exactly is social class ? For me, I see social class by the wealth of someone. The ways in which people life changes are related to their location in the societys hierarchical class system and the influence those circumstances have on their future prospects.
Social class refers to a group of people with similar levels of wealth, influence, and status.
Krech, Crutchfield & Ballachey ( 2000) define social class as:

"a division of society made up of persons possessing certain common social characteristics which are taken to qualify them for intimate, equal status relations with one another, and which restrict their interaction with members of other social classes."

The concept of social status from German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) is used by a number of contemporary sociologiststo explain what social class menas.

 Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with social, status and party classes (or politics) as conceptually distinct elements. All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances".

• Class is based on economic relationship to the market (owner, rentier, employee etc.) 

• Status has to do with non-economic qualities like honour and prestige (see status class) 

• Party refers to factors having to do with affiliations in the political domain (see party class)

Differences in social class can create customer groups. Social class can  be divided into six social group. In fact, the official six social classes in the UK are widely used to profile and predict different customer behaviour.

It is measured as a combination of occupation, income, education, wealth and other variables:

Class name	Social Status	Occupational Head of Household	% of UK Population
A	Upper middle	Higher managerial, administrative or professional	3
B	Middle	Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional	14
C1	Lower middle	Superiors or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional	27
C2	Skilled working	Skilled manual workers	25
D	Working	Semi-skilled and un-skilled manual workers	19
E	Those at lowest level of subsistence	State pensioners or widows, casual or lower-grade workers	12

The information below is helpful to advertisers as it allows them to place their advert at a time and place (channel/publication,) which is most suitable for the product and it's target market.

In order to better understand marketing-strategy decisions it is good to exmine more deeply the nature of social-class variations in shopping patterns. According to Study Marketing most women enjoy shopping regardless of their social class.  However, reasons for enjoyment differ.

• Middle and upper-class women do shopping more frequently than those in the lower class.

• The higher a woman's social class the more she considered it important to shop quickly.

• Middle and working classes had a greater tendency to browse without buying anything.

• The lower the social status, the greater the proportion of downtown shopping.

• A greater percentage of lower-class women favored discount stores than did women in the middle or upper classes. The attraction to high-fashion stores was directly related to social class. Broad-appeal stores were more attractive to the middle class.

People of a high social status will want to be associated with objects and people that reflect the same level of status as themselves. This is where marketers tailor make and style adverts to suit the right target group.An important function of retail advertising is to allow the shopper to make a social-class identification of stores. This is done from the tone and physical character of the advertising.
Advertisement addressed to lower classes :

Advertisement addressed to upper class :

Charity campaign

 

Society consists on private sector, the public sector and the non-profit sector which is referred as a third sector. The third sector consists of organizations which are formed and sustained by a group of people (members) acting voluntarily and without seeking personal profit to provide benefits themselves or for others(Werther&Berman:2001).The Office of the Third Sector (OTS) was created in May 2006 in recognition of the increasingly important role the third sector plays in both society and the economy. It was reshaped as the Office for Civil Society following the 2010 general election, however most people in Britain don't readily recognize the new name. The term Civil Society often is used as a Big Society (community.thirdsector.co.uk:2010). According to Charities Act (2006)“charity” means an institution which is established for charitable purposes only, and falls to be subject to the control of the High Court in the exercise of its jurisdiction with respect to charities. In general, a charity is a not-for-profit organization, which dedicates its earnings to its "charitable objects". Charitable purposes have been classified as:

·         the relief of financial hardship

·         the advancement of education

·         the advancement of religion

·         certain other purposes for the benefit of the community.

(Maclennan&Quint:2007)

Size of the sector:

The voluntary sector is a large and growing part of what is termed civil society. According to Mintel Report number of charities has dropped in six years.There were 189,530 registered charities in 2004, compared to 172,194at the end of 2010.Mintel Report predicts that the number will go up again to 179,073 by 2015 ( ThirdSectorOnline:2010).According to Charity Commission there are 180,909 registered charities organizations in December 2010(Charity Commision:2010). This includes charities in other categories, for example, universities, housing associations, religious organisations and 'quangos', such as the British Council.

Gender, social class  and age differences in charitable giving in UK – key findings based on World Giving Index

·         68% of women aged 45 – 64 are tend  to be the most likely group to give

·         31% of young men aged 16 – 24 are  the least likely to give.

·         69% of people in managerial and professional occupations are the most likely to give

·         People in managerial and professional occupations they give larger median amounts on average (£19)

·         Giving by cash remains the most common method of donation, used by half of all donors (50%) in 2009/10

·        

Globally giving money to charity increases with age.This trend is generally considered to correspond to increasing disposable income. According to Mintel  over-55s are most likely to donate. Younger consumers (aged 16-24) are least likely to donate.Globally ,women are marginally more likely to give money than men (30% versus 29%). Men, however, are marginally more likely to volunteer, and to help a stranger.

35 Seconds....

  ...this is the time in which a massive earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti...
 An estimated three million people were affected by the quake. The Haitian government reported that an estimated 316,000 people died, 300,000 had been injured and 1,000,000 made homeless. The death toll has also been suggested to be much lower at somewhere between 92,000 and 220,000, with around 1.5 million to 1.8 million homeless.The government of Haiti also estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000  commercial buildings  had collapsed or were severely damaged.

It’s been one year since the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti. Reaching the children who need us most has been more difficult than anyone could have imagined. Approximately 380,000 children are still living in camps. To make matters worse, a cholera outbreak has spread through the country, threatening the lives of those who survived the earthquake. Over the last year, UNICEF has been helping to provide safe drinking water and is currently supporting 72 cholera treatment centres.


 

What/who influence you the most ?

The measure of success has been marked with status symbols of anything and everything that can be slapped with a label such as clothing, cars and electronics . Many people have developed a need to identify with brand image and conform to the influence of advertisers in order to gain the acceptance of their mass peer audience.

The desire to be accepted and belong to a group is human need. Social psychologists have conducted numerous experiments through various forms of social influence, groups can change their members’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior. According to Leon Mann, conformity means ‘yielding to group pressures’. People are not alone in the world because they belong to many groups and everyone expects members of these groups to behave in certain ways . If an individual don’t confirm and behave appropriately he/she are likely to be rejected by the group. Lessing states “most people cannot stand being alone... but what is dangerous is not the belonging to a group, or groups, but not understanding the social laws that govern groups and govern us”  .

Conformity can be defined as adjusting one's behavior or thinking to match those of other people or a group standard. There are lots of reasons why people conform, including the desire/need to fit in or be accepted by others and maintaining order in ones life.

Kelman (1958) suggests 3 types of conformity:

• Compliance- A change in behaviour without a change in opinion (going along with the group).
• Internalisation- A change in behaviour and opinion. 'True Conformity'.
• Identification- Adopting the group's views because value group membership. Often temporary.

People are bombarded everyday with millions of advertisements and product suggestions. All of these efforts attempt to convince the individual to buy a particular product because it will bring some satisfaction to their life. The task of the marketer is to establish a marketing strategy that will be successful in this goal. Many of the ads on television and in magazines place emphasis on beautiful people and fun settings and associate them with the benefits that one product offers over another.

According to Lascu and Zinkhan (1999) the majority of marketing strategies focus on showing beautiful and happy people using certain products, therefore, people are  to assume that they should use those products in order to be more like the beautiful, happy people. 

Lascu and Zinkhan discussed the importance of conformity by noting that if this phenomena is true in a large target market, marketers can search for more ways to mass market these ideas of interpersonal peer influences and increase the success of their product dramatically. They also noted that it appeared a conformity approach had less effect on older more educated adults such as professionals and that different marketing approaches may need to be used with those target markets. 

The reasons for the effectiveness of conformity on purchasing decisions are not certain. Once a person has conformed to group pressure and agreed that they are interested in a product, they will often agree to purchase that product. According to Spangenberg, Sprott, Grohmann, and Smith (2003) once a person stated they would purchase a product they were extremely likely to do so.

It has long been recognized that the pleasure of consuming a good may be affected by the consumption choice of other consumers. In some cases, social pressures may lead to conformity. Consumers very often base purchases more on the trends of their peer group or the guidance of illusory advertising and less on information and research.During the decision-making process, consumers use rational thinking.There can be factors, such as  the  peers pressure that cause consumers to abbreviate the decision-making process to make purchase decisions and therefore exhibit irrationalconsumption behavior, called "impulse buying" (Mowen and Minor, 1998).

Peer pressure can be defined as the pressure exerted on a person by a group of people the same age, same socio-cultural category or sharing the same interests to change their behavior, their morals or their attitudes towards different aspects in life just to be in line with the way other people in their peer group are.

Opinion leaders

In general is the member of a reference group who provides information about a specific sphere of interest to reference group participants seeking information.

Opinion leaders communicate messages to a primary group, influencing the attitudes and behavior change of their followers.

In marketing point of view opinion leaders have been identified as those who spread ideas and opinions across their social networks on a regular basis. The study identified three groups of opinion leaders :

• Hub Urbanites who share information via social media and instant messaging,
• Email Evangelists who share information via email and SMS, 
•  Offline Influencers who share information and news face to face or over the phone.

Generation marketing : Understanding the Millennial Generation

“Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.”

 Ronald Reagan

Generation: group of contemporaries; all of the people who were born at approximately the same time, considered as a group, and especially when considered as having shared interests and attitudes.

Sometimes in order to learn more about yourself, people have to understand their generation. No matter who you are as a person, you tend to have similar values, attitudes and worldviews of everyone else in your generation, because let's face it, you can't help the year you were born. Each generation has its own unique character, a character shaped by key economic, social and cultural forces. There are four popular generational categories that most marketers tend to focus on. They include:

• Traditionalist Generation
• Boomer Generation 
• Generation X 
• Generation Y or Millennial Generation 

It is generally thought that people of the same age group would have similar behaviors and traits. However, the different generations have their own distinct characteristics, needs and personalities.Each generation has distinct attitudes, behaviors, expectations, habits and motivational buttons. It is crucial that the marketing strategies used are different for each generation.

Generation Y has vastly different demands, expectations and motivations than the generations that came before them. The old rules of management are no longer effective, and the best leaders are embracing the change.Who is Generation Y? How does this generation think about the world ?

 Members of Generation Y may include individuals born between 1980 and 1999 (Campton & Hodge, 2006); 1978 and 1995 (The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association Office of Diversity, 2006); 1980 and 2002 (Kersten, 2002); and 1978 and 1988 (Martin, 2005). The label associated with this generation is not yet finalized. 

Eric Greenberg, author of Generation We, stated that, ”Millennials are a special generation, potentially the greatest generation ever. They are not pessimistic or vengeful. Rather, they are sober in their view of the world. They reject punditry and bickering because they are post-partisan, post-ideological, and post-political. Most important, they believe in the greater good and are ready to dedicate themselves to achieving it”.

Fun Facts about Gen Y

They are many names of Generation y which  refers to the generations to succeed  Generation X:

•  "Echo Boomers"  : refers to the fact taht many people of Generation y are children of Baby Boomers (the echo of the Baby Boomers) 
• The "Millennials" 
• The "Net Generation/ "Dot-com" generation : refers to the Internet being a part of their lives that they grew up and take for granded.
• The Boomerang Generation : refers to the tendancy that for many Millennials to move back in with their parents after going away to college .
• The Peter Pan Generation  : refers to dalying the rites of passage into adulthood longer than most generations before them.

• Others names : the  "Trophy kids", and, very appropriately, "Generation Y Not",  Nexters, Generation www.

Standard behaviours and characteristics attributed to Gen Y through research findings are presented below : 

 

The graph below shows the influences which have an impact on Generation Y.

How much does Generation Y love social media?

 

Social networking websites have been around since the mid-90's, but in recent years, social networking has exploded across the web. All the graphs , which are situated below, shows the overall picture of the frequency use of social networking sites like Facebook/Twitter. The results of the studies highlighted the growing importance of the Internet especially  social networking for Generation Y.

Facebook is fundamental among Gen-Y.

 

Everything you know about Generation Y is wrong!

According to Human Resources Magazine less than a third of 15-34 year olds believe companies should allow employees to use social media at work, according to a report that debunks myths about Generation Y.  However, far more men support the idea than women. While only 26% of women agree companies should allow their employees to use social media at work, 36% of men agree. 

The report is based on research conducted in the UK, US and Canada with more than 4,500 15-34 year-olds. It also finds that Generation Y women use their offline support networks far more to discuss career matters than men. Some 62% of women talk about jobs offline compared to only 50% of men. Young couples talk most about their work and careers, both through online (30%) and offline communication (63%). Young parents talk least about their work, online (22%) and offline (51%).

"Everything you know about Generation Y is wrong," said Decode CEO Robert Barnard. "Most people think that the most digital generation ever will be clamouring to make work all about social media, but in reality Generation Y still wants to separate their personal space from their workplace."

Other research conducted by Decode across the world finds that 57% of Generation Y has given money to a charity or community group in the past 12 months

 Most Effective Techniques for Targeting Millennial Customers 

Results of a May-June 2008 survey of executives worldwide released by eMarketer shows the views of the best ways to market to Generation Y . As can be seen from the chart below, the execs voted the top three Gen Y marketing tactics as viral marketing, peer-to-peer recommendations, and sponsorship of Millennials' favorite programs.

 

The Economist conducted a survey to illustratea sophisticated understanding of the consumer profile of the millennial.  Seventy-one percent of the respondents say that when it comes to purchasing decisions, millennials care most about convenience, followed by overall style and taste (69%), peer recommendation (67%) and accessibility (65%). Even more striking, executives believe that price—a traditional infl uence on a purchasing decision—is one of the least important buying factors for millennials. “Top customer service

is a priority,” says one survey respondent. “Price is not.”

 Online Generation ?

In the past, customers tended to go directly to the company to enquire about a product, make a purchase or raise a complaint; today they increasingly go online. On the web, they learn, shop and share their experiences, both positive and negative, with sometimes startling consequences. Due to the unlimited information flowing through the Internet, Gen Y has developed into the most well-informed consumer market. Smart businesses know that technologies are not going back in the bottle and are learning to embrace the social revolution, adapting their business processes and ways of working and managing.The advent of the Generation Y into the workplace is bringing new changes that need to be addressed. The Generation Y is, perhaps, the most digitally sophisticated generation we have ever seen. They are looking for a sustainable environment offering a social structure within both a physical and virtual environment.The video below shows Next Generation Media .