CHAPTER 6
The Role of Cultural Forces CUSTOM
RULES THE LAW.
— LATIN
PROVERB
factor in determining whether your product, be it goods or services, is compatible with a particular market is the proper and thorough understanding of the target culture. Cultures can be painted with very broad strokes or minutely dissected. The more layers that are peeled away, the greater the market segmentation available. It’s truly a case in which knowledge is power—marketing power. Because this book deals with international marketing, “culture” will be viewed as the total pattern of human behavior embodied in a nation-state and its internal subdivisions.
THE MOST IMPORTANT
Language: The Importance of Communication VERBAL
Most of the world’s national boundaries are set along linguistic perimeters. Often, these perimeters have a physical form (a mountain range, a river, an ocean) that permitted the language to develop in solitude and kept it separate from neighboring tongues. Once travel over those boundaries became possible and desirable, so did trade, and the first marketing problem was confronted almost immediately: communication. A loaf of bread may be pan, bahn mi, brot, or mianbao depending on where one travels. Once the name is settled upon, trying to trade for a loaf of bread brings on a whole host of other problems and nomenclature. Establishing a common value for goods is best served by speaking a common language. Though pointing and pantomiming may work when exchanging milk for bread in the short run, modern marketeers have neither the time nor the inclination for such activity. While English has become a default language for doing global business, it’s just that—something used in the absence of a better tool. Wise marketeers learned early on in their careers that speaking the local language, to some degree, gave them a marked advantage over less polyglot competitors and provided genuine insight into their target market. Besides enabling the foreign businessperson to present products and establish value, language opens the door to the interior of the target culture. First-hand assessment of all the motivational factors present (including those that trigger purchases) in any given society can only come about after the language has been mastered. Social interaction can take place on a more intimate level (once translators are taken out of the loop), and foreign marketeers can be introduced to all of the nuances that make up a social fabric. Festivals, parties, art, literature, music, and even food take on greater meaning and, most importantly for our purposes, marketing significance. For some nations (e.g., France, China, Brazil,) language
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