Page 216 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

208 Marketing: the Basics
have a product which customers in that culture will want to buy. The difference can be diverse in terms of consumer needs, wants and usage patterns for products. Nowhere is this truer than in developing countries where one hit product is a radio that you wind to power it – a product that would not be much of a winner in Western Europe. Differences in consumer response to marketing mix elements and differences in the legal environment and the marketing institutions. For example, in Canada when you advertise pharmaceutical products you can either mention the disease or the drug name but not both, in the US you can mention both, thus ads for the same product must, by law, be different for the two countries.
Some products, like Sony televisions or Dell computers don’t need too much adaptation, consumers around the world are looking for not dissimilar offerings. At the other extreme are local foods which can vary considerably. A favourite restaurant of mine in Tokyo offers only dishes made from cow tongues. Clearly, they have found a niche market, and given the line up to get in on a Saturday night an excellent one. However, this particular Japanese cuisine, unlike Sushi, doesn’t seem to export well to other nations. For the marketer figuring out the degree to which culture is impor- tant and the degree to which they should go for one world product and marketing mix is a critical decision. Let’s now go through the marketing mix to quickly consider each in turn in how a marketer may have to fine tune for different foreign markets. But before we do that a few thoughts on culture.
NATIONAL CULTURE
To anyone who has travelled it is obvious that cultures differ. That is part of the charm of Europe where many cultures are crowded into a fairly small area. In parts of Holland you can not only eat in a German, Belgian or Dutch restaurant you can actually get to those countries within an hour or so drive. Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede identified four cultural dimensions that can differentiate nations.
• Individualism versus collectivism. In more collective societies, like Japan, the self-worth of the individual is rooted more in