Page 190 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

182 Marketing: the Basics
the degree that the individual is important versus the group. Japan and Australia differ quite considerably on these important ways of understanding a culture. In Japan hierarchy and your position in society is important, Australia on the other hand is much more informal and relaxed, everyone is a ‘mate’. In Japan group consensus is key to decision making and buying in the business-to-business (B2B) marketing context. In Australia one of their national symbols is the lone cowboy on the giant station, or what Americans call a ranch, a potent metaphor of Australia’s respect for the rugged individual.
One of the dangers of marketing outside of our home market is that we may well not understand how to effectively communicate a marketing message in that foreign culture. One lesson that many have learned is that they must hire people from that foreign culture to overcome cross-cultural differences. To complicate matters, within a national culture there are often distinct subcultures, Quebec in Canada is one example but even in the relatively homogeneous US market we can see that there are considerable cultural differences between New England, Texas, California and the Mid-West. The divisions do not end there. Within urban centres, distinct ethnic enclaves have emerged making it potentially difficult for marketers to use standard messages. Wal-Mart quite famously committed a considerable faux pas when it entered Canada in the 1990s. Though a substantial percentage of the population speaks more than two languages, Wal-Mart put out door-to-door advertising only in English in Montreal, the second largest French speaking city in the world. Needless to say it took some years for Wal-Mart to win the hearts of Francophones in Montreal.
Marketers are always on the look out for shifts in cultural trends within a given country. During the 1990s, consumers began to switch from fatty manufactured foods to low calorie and often organic foods. As the trend persisted, food manufacturers changed their entire marketing mix to reflect this new reality. Food giant Frito-Lay for example launched a new version of their best selling potato chip using certified organic products, and to reduce caloric content, used a baking process instead of deep-frying to prepare the food. To further separate the product from its unhealthier cousins, Baked Lays are often found in the organic section of a grocery store.