Cross Cultural Marketing Concepts and Contexts

Abstract

Traditionally International Marketing texts look out from one culture and attempt to export or adapt ideas that work at home to a different culture. Apart from the odd vignette showing how cultural misunderstandings can affect business relations, very little material exists on the realities of marketing to different cultures both externally – beyond the borders of a country or continent – and internally – that is marketing to different cultural communities at home. Cross-cultural Marketing explores the key roles that multiculturalism plays in different societies and its impact on marketing theory and practice and will examine the importance of the cultural context in different societies’ marketing practices. Marketing has a strong cultural context and a great deal of marketing activities takes place in settings that are context-specific. Thus, cultural contexts of marketing have become inescapable issues in both the study and practice of marketing. The text considers the various branches of marketing activity – communication, services, relationships, branding, product strategy, pricing, e-commerce, consumer behaviour – and places them in a cross-cultural context. There are eight valuable case studies dealing with issues as varied as the pharmaceutical industry and the AIDS crisis in Africa and the introduction of the Euro to international Rugby websites and cultural issues in retailing. The contributors are drawn from a variety of cultures across all continents. Cross-cultural Marketing is a valuable resource for students following an undergraduate or postgraduate course on international marketing or international business.