GREAT LAKES INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

DEBATE
CULTURE
DOESNT MATTER
CB Assignment 4

SUSAN THOMAS
FT164090
SECTION A

CULTURE DOESNT REALLY MATTER

Culture is the by-product of hardened beliefs of a set of people who define
themselves separately from others. Behaviour is just a minor functional aspect of
that culture. Acceptance of a certain product is purely dependent on the cultural
synergy between product makers and customers, whereas certain products
cultures role s not that significant.

AGAINST

In India, credit card business in not a very profitable business because

credit card providers earn a profit when a customer delays the repayment
without defaulting. Whereas most of the Indian customers repay their
credit card debt within the free repayment period. The very basic cause
behind this phenomenon is the Indian culture and value system. Indians
are conditions in such a way that they beliefs debt is not good. Hence they
prefer to debit card rather than credit card and even if they use it, they
repay as soon as possible.

In 1995 when Tanishq launch its product offerings with magnificent stylish
design made of 18 carat gold, it did not succeed because it was perceived
as extremely western. What Indian customer wants were classic and
traditional gold jewellery made of pure 22 carat gold. They were not ready
to experiment with something new in the segment of gold even though
superior design was obtained through 18 carat. They failed to understand
this traditionalism however they recovered very strongly by providing offer
of pure gold and implementation of carat-meter. Now a carat-meter is
there is its entire outlet.

General Motors made a blunder by naming their one product as NOVA in

Latin America because in Spanish, nova means doesnt go. So this offer

was perceived wrongly and failed awfully just because of the language
factor.

When McDonald first came to India, they were struggling with their main
offering Big Mac because it contains beef and Indians have issue with beef.
Later they introduced Maharaja Mac to replace Big Mac to cope the
situation with non-beef offering. Same was the situations with KFC. To
capture the veg customer segment, they launch vegetarian offerings
especially in India.

Kellogg has entered in Indian market a long time age but still it is
struggling to make the market growing. The major cause is strong Indian
breakfast culture. But they are very successful in the US market as the
culture there is quite different from India. In India breakfast is perceived as
a very important meal of the day and they want some filling breakfast
which corn flakes failed to be perceived. Also Indians does not like cold
milk as breakfast and hot milk makes the corn flakes soggy and kills the
crispness. Also Kelloggs products are perceived as very costly product
though it is very comparable to the normal breakfast cost. All these factors
for failure are mainly because of cultural dissonance and lack of
understanding of the culture of the customer.

All the cultural events and rituals create enormous opportunities for
festival marketing. Take the recent Diwali sales for example.

FOR
As compared to past there is an immense shift in peoples attitude. Take the
below examples.

When it involves the selling of products such as paper clips, salt and sugar
where the regional influences are nil, the culture has no say. Such
products are bought on less cognitive and hedonic motivation and more on
utility. The attribute of a pin is same in Japan, USA and India. The attribute

of taste of salt is accepted everywhere around the world. Hence in a

market where the brand value is of no importance at all and the people do
not associate with any brand the cultural aspect holds little relevance. The
commodity market is therefore same everywhere. Due to globalization
more commodities are found across the world and the homogeneity has
made it impossible to differentiate one brand from another. Also if we take
the example of oil, the commodity is accepted everywhere even though it
comes from Middle East and there are wars going in that region of the
world. But that has not slowed down the global consumption of oil at all.

In a B2B market, the focus is on sales. For example a B2B product can be a
photocopy machine. The machine as such has no cultural implications
because the printing technology is same as in all countries. Here the
individualistic nature or power distance index has no role to play. In a B2B
market the culture is irrelevant because there is no indication that it will
have any impact on the sales of the product.

Cross border music channel like MTV or sport channel like ESPN or TEN
SPORT have a global demand not any specific cultural demand. Here are
some contrary view points where culture hardly matters. As also we have
seen NBA has an equally strong fan base in China.

High technology involved product does not really much differ their
offerings just to satisfy the needs of different culture. Take the example of
Hoover as in the HBR article Globalisation Of Markets though people in
Europe had different preference in terms of features of washing machine,
with the right price and promotion they readily accepted the global
standard.

When the offering is a premium product, it will not be different for different
culture. For example people buy i-phone or BMW car and the purchase

decision is not dependent on culture but rather prestige value. General

Motors.

Cosmetics are also something that doesnt have a culture barrier; foreign
products flood the Indian market. After all out of all the high selling brands
Lakme is the only brand originated n India.

Low involvement and utilitarian products are also hardly culture driven.
Tata will never differentiate their offerings for salt according to various
cultures.

Among the consumer durable products the two most convergent products
are automobiles and television sets. They created unified global need for
themselves. General Electric is one such company that has found success
internationally.

We can see lot of Indians packing their bags and going for Dubai Shopping
Festival. This clearly points out the changing outlook of people.

Conclusion
Culture is the backbone for any society. Culture must be taken while promoting
products. As globalisation has taken its hold the division is slowly decreasing,
people now are well informed of the other horizons and are changing their
perception to a more common one. It is the quality and price that matters.