Culture and Consumer

Behavior
Definitions:
1. Culture is the conventionalized
behavior pattern of a society.
2. A culture is the complex of values,
ideas, attitudes, and other meaningful
symbols created by people to shape
human behavior and the artifacts of
that behavior as they are transmitted
from one generation to the next.
 Three imp features of this
definition
• 1. It is created by people; evolving over time as the
result of human activities and passed on to the
succeeding generation.
• 2. The impact of cultural influence is both tangible
(food habit) and intangible (belief).
• 3. The cultural environment evolves over time &
most often evolves over lengthy periods.
• Examples: Changes in women’s roles in home and
in business has come about quite slowly.
• Clothing styles for example come and go hastily.
• For our purposes, culture may be
defined as patterns of learned behavior
which are held in common and transmitted
by the members of any given society.

• Analyzing this definition of culture, we can

identify three important aspects of a
culture.
• They are:
• 1. Cultural Patterning: culture, first of all refers to
patterns of behavior which are held in common by
members of a society.
• Different cultures reveal a tremendous spectrum of
diversity in what a society expects of its members.
• A cultural setting determines the generalized
behavior patterns that virtually everyone in the
culture will adopt and encourages such patterns
because they gratify people’s needs.
• These are functions of culture important to
marketers who hope to encourage certain patterns
of consumption behavior themselves.
• 2. Learning Culture: culture is learned than
programmed genetically.
• Persons from different cultural background see the
same objects and situations differently.
• An Indian villager may view a tree as a living thing
with needs, perception and values of its own.
• Learning culturally approved behavior involves
feedback from others, who selectively reward,
tolerate, or censure (condemning) different
attitudes and activities.
• Through early observation of others, we see how
consumer products and services are used by our
parents and others who influence us.
• 3. Cultural Transmission: through
learning, cultural elements are
transmitted from one generation to the
next and survive the lifespan of any one
person or group.
• This process is known as
“ENCULTURATION”.
COMPONENTS OF CULTURE
• Culture may be analyzed according to
its:
• 1. Cognitive,
• 2. Material, and
• 3. Normative components.
• 1. Cognitive component: The principal
cognitive aspect of a culture is knowledge,
ideas that have some basis in observable,
factual evidence.
• In a primitive culture these are likely to
include ideas about gods, super natural
phenomena, and concepts of after life.
• In western cultures, knowledge has
become highly refined through systematic
testing and observation and the practical
application of science to physical and
social environment.
• 2. Material Component: Closely tied to
the technology a society possesses are
the material features of its culture known
as artifacts.
• These vary among cultures.
• Supersonic jet, computer systems etc.
• 3. Normative component: every culture
maintains a normative system consisting
of values and rules of conduct, known as
norms, which guide and regulate
behavior.
• Values are the ideas about what is good or
correct by which people conduct themselves.
• In American culture, one principal value is
the acceptance of change.
• Norms are standards of behavior which
govern how people think or act in specific
situations.
• Norms that regulate behavior considered
very significant to a society are called mores.
 USEFUL CONCEPTS OF
CULTURAL ANALYSIS
• The most popular form of cultural study
today is known as participant observer
technique.
• This is a traditional field study approach of
entering a culture, observing and
recording data, and asking questions.
• Three concepts that have emerged from
anthropological research prove useful in
identifying cultural influences on
consumption.
• These are:
– 1. Cultural Symbolism
– 2. Cultural Relativism, and
– 3. Cultural Change.
• 1. Cultural Symbolism: There are two types of
symbol that people use in cognition,
REFERENTIAL and EXPRESSIVE.
• Referential symbols are words or items that refer
to specific objects.
• EXAMPLE: TELEPHONE.
• Expressive symbols on the other hand, carry
connotative (implying an attribute) meaning which
are subject to interpretation rather than limited.
• MARKETING SIGNIFICANCE OF EXPRESSIVE
SYMBOLS SHOULD BE KNOWN BY THE
MARKETERS.
• 2. Cultural Relativism: People have always
been inclined to view their own cultural
milieu as superiors to others, exemplified
by the stereotypical American tourist who
complains about the drinking water,
service, and generally backward behavior
encountered away from home.
• Indians tell “you white men are not
hospitable.”
• This human trait is known as
“ETHNOCENTRISM”, - a tendency to view
and judge other cultures by the standards of
one’s own cultural system.
• It inevitably leads to the conclusion that the
way we do things is somehow right and the
way others behave is wrong or at least
substandard.
• Cultural relativism is simply the principle of
judging any behavior in its societal and
cultural context.
• 3. Cultural Change: Because culture
must be adaptive to survive, cultural
change is an ongoing process.
• Two factors are responsible.
• (i) Technological change: it changes
norms but very often technological
developments happen because values are
already changing.
• Example: Introduction of frozen foods.
• (ii) Cultural diffusion: Change that occurs
because one culture becomes exposed to
another, is known as cultural diffusion.
• Example: we follow Western or Indian
cultural because of trade agreement or
contact.
 CROSS_CULTURAL RESEARCH AND
MULTINATIONAL MARKETING
• Marketing is becoming increasingly an international
venture.
• A real need had appeared for marketing strategies
with multinational expertise.
• It is easy to make huge mistakes in international
markets simply by applying formulas proven
successful in home country experience.
• Many companies made such tactical mistakes
because they did not fully understand the cultural
settings they entered and failed to make appropriate
adaptations in product, promotion, pricing, and
distribution in approaching their new customers.
• Cross-cultural research is necessary.
• Cross-cultural research is a methodology
for comparing cultures on the basis of
similarities and differences as well as
studying small segments of a total culture.
• What the demographies of population are,
what cultural type may be identified, and
what kinds of values and norms people
accept and live by.
 ADAPTING A CULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE
• Multinational trade are beginning to
encourage sophisticated marketers to
develop the cultural perspective both in
overseas markets and in their own cultural
milieu.
• Obtaining and asking cultural information
effectively means asking a few pertinent
questions about any social group under
consideration.
• Question 1: How does the cultural setting
influence or determine product or service
needs?
• Question 2: How well does an existing
product meet those needs or how could it be
adapted to do so?
• Question 3: How can information about
the product be communicated for optimal
results?
• Question 4: How can the product best be
distributed in this culture?
• The answers usually lie in the research
findings about the normative, material, and
cognitive aspects of that culture, findings
that well provide the marketer with some
knowledge as to what kinds of consumer
behavior might be expected.