THE MARKETERS' RESPONSE

At the very heart of marketing lies the product life curve, from which there is no escape. Eventually, over time, sales of any product or service decline, as it loses its appeal, the market becomes saturated, it becomes displaced by newer or cheaper replacement products, or simply as the original need it was satisfying no longer exists. Therefore the basic tool of the marketer is portfolio planning (Table 1.2).

At first sight, the new international markets are there to grab. But despite the claims of the free market protagonists, what constitutes a market economy differs across the world (Farnham, 1999). Thus marketers should not expect to transfer their own ethnocentric frameworks to other cultures directly without a methodology for dealing with the cultural differences (Table 1.3).

In summary, there are many factors that combine to feed the growth of globalization. These include:

· An increasing number of countries opening up their markets, especially the Far East and China.

· The advancing reach of information technology and communications, including the Internet.

· Corporations seeking wider markets for their goods and services, cost reduction (or enhancements), and optimizing logistics.

· Support by the World Bank, OECD, GATT, and other agencies to enable world trade growth.

The central thrust of this book is based on the analysis of the values of different cultures and the reconciliation of the dilemmas that these differences produce. But let's first note that fundamental marketing mistakes are too often still being made even at the most basic level of cultural differences.

Many of these arise simply from language, religion, and common courtesy. Established product names in one language may have different meanings in others. In advertisements, symbols or gestures in one culture (like the first finger and thumb) may have entirely opposite meanings in another. The color red, often meaning danger in western cultures, can send different messages about a product to Chinese audience, for whom red can represent success. Similarly, yellow as a color in marketing promotions may be offensive to Arabs when used in some contexts, yet convey freshness and summer in western cultures. Launches to promote new products, accompanied by buffet lunches, have been inappropriately scheduled during Ramadan in some parts of the Muslim world.

More important than these overt and more obvious aspects of culture are the differences that derive more subtly from the different meaning given by different cultures to apparently identical products or services.

We can more easily recognize explicit cultural differences by adopting an anti-ethnocentric approach, though we may not be aware of more implicit ones. Cultural due diligence is still absent from the management agenda and from many classic marketing models such as those of Porter. Most classical marketing theory has been based on single-culture research, especially the Anglo-American studies.

As explained in the introduction, it is our thesis that "culture" in today's marketplace is not simply a factor to be added in to the marketing equation, but a fundamental construct that pervades the whole of the marketing paradigm. As we noted there, this book is not a list of "dos and don'ts"; nor is it an ad hoc discussion of cases. We aim to offer a new conceptual framework that provides a way of thinking that can be generalized both across cultures and the spectrum of marketing activities, and that can be applied in a practical way.

Global gaffes

General Motors's promotion in Belgium for a car that had a "body by Fisher" turned out to have, in the Flemish translation, a "corpse by Fisher."

A Canadian importer of Turkish shirts destined for Quebec used a dictionary to help translate the label "Made in Turkey" into French. The final translation was "Fabrique en Dinde." True, dinde does mean turkey - the bird, not the country. That is Turquie.

KFC's "finger lickin' good" slogan was mistranslated in China as "eat your fingers off."

The Ford Pinto flopped when it was launched in Brazil. Mystified executives later learned that "pinto" is local slang for small genitals.

"Pepsi brings you back to life" was translated into Chinese as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave."

The lager brand Coors' slogan, "turn it loose," became "suffer from diarrhea" in Spanish.

Our new marketing paradigm is intended to provide a robust framework for the marketer and is based on the Three Rs: recognize, respect, and reconciliation. The first step is to recognize that there are cultural differences in marketing. Different views about "where the customer is coming from" aren't right or wrong; they are just different. It is easy to be judgmental about people and societies that give a different meaning to their world. The next step is to respect these differences and accept the customer's rights to interpret the world, and our products and marketing efforts, in the way they choose.

Many marketing professionals have told us that very often their clients don't know what they want and that they therefore need to create a market (push). Others, however, say that a marketing professional should thrive on the needs of clients and be able to listen carefully to them (pull). As soon as an organization becomes international it is faced even more with the imperative to reconcile needs and wants. Where internally oriented cultures, such as the US, might start with technology push in order to connect it to the needs of clients at a later stage, the Japanese might first "listen" to their clients' needs and be pulled by them in order to attach them to the developments of technology at a later stage. Because of these different views of the world, we have two seemingly opposing views of the contrasting cultures - those of the seller and buyer. The classical approach is to focus solely on customer satisfaction: "To make what we know we can sell." But we also have to consider our own corporate knowledge: "To try to sell what we know we can make." Thus, in our new approach, the task of the marketer is much more than simply abandoning their own strengths for the sake of customer satisfaction: It is to reconcile these seemingly opposing orientations.

The total reconciliation approach we offer requires the inclusion of stakeholders, customers, suppliers, employees, investors, and the community at large with a well-defined mission that is expressed through clear values and purpose. Thus tomorrow's organization is a business-led "charity" that promotes the reconciliation approach through research and continually refined enabling mechanisms. The role of employees must change from being only a human "resource" to being professionals who can find ways of applying their capacities to inspire these new sustainable organizations.

In the widest view, global marketing has to become the "acceptable face of capitalism," reconciling values associated with more materialistic cultures with those of "the simple life" ideology.

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 1062