Chapter 17 Global Consumer Culture

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Chapter 17Global Consumer Culture
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR, 8eMichael Solomon
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Chapter Objectives

• When you finish this chapter you should
  understand why
• Styles act as a mirror to reflect underlying
  cultural conditions.
• We distinguish between high and low culture.
• Many modern marketers are reality engineers.
• New products, services, and ideas spread through
  a population. Different types of people are more
  or less likely to adopt them.
• Many people and organizations play a role in the
  fashion system that creates and communicates
  symbolic meaning to consumers.

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Chapter Objectives (cont.)

• Fashions follow cycles.
• Products that succeed in one culture may fail in
  another if marketers fail to understand the
  differences among consumers in each place.
• Western (and particularly American) culture has a
  huge impact around the world, though people in
  other countries dont necessarily ascribe the
  same meanings to products as we do.

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The Creation of Culture

• Influence of inner-city teens
• Hip-hop/black urban culture
• Outsider heroes, anti-oppression messages, and
  alienation of blacks
• Flavor on the streets

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The Movement of Meaning
Figure 17.1
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Cultural Selection

• Characteristics of fashion/popular culture
• Reflection of fundamental societal trends
• Style begins as risky by small group, then
  spreads as others become aware/confident
• Styles as interplay between deliberate inventions
  and ordinary consumers who modify styles to suit
  needs
• Cultural products travel widely
• Influential media people decide which will
  succeed
• Most styles eventually wear out

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Culture Production Process (CPS)

• CPS set of individuals and organizations
  responsible for creating and marketing a cultural
  product
• Three major CPS subsystems
• Creative subsystem
• Managerial subsystem
• Communications subsystem

Figure 17.2
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Cultural Gatekeepers

• Cultural gatekeepers are responsible to
  filtering the overflow of information and
  materials intended for customers
• Tastemakers who influence products consumers
  get to consider
• Throughput sector
• Movie, restaurant, and car reviewers
• Interior designers
• Disc jockeys
• Retail buyers
• Magazine editors

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High Art versus Low Art

• High and low culture blend together today in
  interesting ways
• Costco now stocks fine art (Picasso, Chagall)
• We appreciate advertising as an art form
• The arts are big businessmarketers often
  incorporate high art to promote products

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Discussion

• Creative directors in advertising agencies
  sometimes view their advertising creations as art
  rather than a craft. Their clientsthe actual
  marketersusually view it as a craft.
• Which should it be? Why?
• What kind of conflict might arise between these
  two differing opinions?

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Cultural Formula

• Cultural formulae certain roles and props often
  occur consistently
• Mass culture churns out products for a mass
  market
• Aiming to please average taste of
  undifferentiated audience
• Certain roles/props often occur consistently
• Recycling of images
• Creative subsystem members reach back through
  time for inspiration (remix the past)

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Discussion

• Can you identify a cultural formula at work in
  romance or action movies?
• Do you see parallels among the roles different
  characters play (e.g., the hero, the evildoer,
  the temptress, etc.)?

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Reality Engineering

• Many consumer environments have images/characters
  spawned by marketing campaigns or are retreads
• Marketers use pop culture as promotional vehicles
• New vintage (e.g., used jeans)
• Elements used are both sensory and spatial

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Examples of Reality Engineering

• Reality engineering marketers appropriate
  elements of popular culture and convert them for
  use as promotional vehicles
• Japanese alibi buddy service
• Ricks Café in Casablanca
• Coyote Ugly bars
• Seinfelds Soup Nazi
• Nissans brief in-person live commercials

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Reality Engineering (cont.)

• Cultivation hypothesis the medias ability to
  distort consumers perceptions of reality
• Heavy TV viewers overestimate how wealthy people
  are and likelihood that they will be victims of a
  violent crime
• Media also exaggerates frequency of behaviors
  such as drinking or smoking

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Product Placement

• Insertion of specific products and use of brand
  names in movie/TV scripts
• Desperate Housewives ad on drycleaners bags
• Is the line between advertising and programming
  becoming too fuzzy?
• Directors incorporate branded props for realism
• Product placement can aid in consumer decision
  making

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Advergaming

• Gamers have become a more sophisticated lot and
  are now more representative of the general
  population
• Advergaming online games are merging with
  interactive advertisements that let companies
  target specific types of consumers
• Advertisers can get viewers attention for a much
  longer time in video games
• Can tailor games and products to user profiles
• Format gives advertisers great flexibility
• Can track usage and conduct market research

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The Diffusion of Innovations

• Innovation any product that consumers perceive
  to be new
• New manufacturing technique
• New product variation
• New way to deliver product
• New way to package product
• Diffusion of innovation
• Successful innovations spread through the
  population at various rates

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Types of Adopters
Figure 17.3
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Adopting Innovations

• Adoption of innovations resembles consumer
  decision-making sequence
• Individualistic consumers are more innovative
  than collective consumers
• Likelihood of adopting innovations categories
• Innovators and early adopters
• Laggards
• Late adopters (mainstream)

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Adopting Innovations (cont.)

• Innovators
• Tend to be category-specific
• Tend to favor taking risks
• Higher educational/income levels
• Socially active
• Lead users
• Early adopters
• Concern for social acceptance (expressive
  products)
• Involved in product category and value fashion
• Tend to field-test style changes

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Behavioral Demands of Innovations

• Three major types of innovations (amount of
  disruption/change they bring to our lives)
• Continuous innovation
• Evolutionary rather than revolutionary
• Dynamically continuous innovation
• More pronounced change to existing product
• Discontinuous innovation
• Creates major changes in the way we live

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Prerequisites for Successful Adoption
Compatibility
Innovation should be compatible with consumers
lifestyles
Trialability
People are more likely to adopt an innovation if
they can experiment with it prior to purchase
Complexity
A product that is easy to understand will be
chosen over competitors
Observability
Innovations that are easily observable are more
likely to spread
Relative Advantage
Product should offer relative advantage over
other alternatives
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The Fashion System

• Fashion system all those people and
  organizations involved in creating symbolic
  meanings and transferring these meanings to
  cultural goods
• Fashion affects all types of cultural phenomena
  (music, art, architecture, science)
• Fashion as code/language for meanings
• Fashion is context-dependent/undercoded
• Fashion versus a fashion versus in fashion

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Cultural Categories

• Cultural categories basic ways we characterize
  the world reflects the meaning we impart to
  products
• Culture makes distinctions between different
  times, leisure and work, and gender
• Dominant aspects/themes of culture are reflected
  in design/marketing of items
• Costumes of politicians, rock/movie stars
• 1950s/60s space-age mastery
• Fashion colors for each season

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Cultural Categories (cont.)

• Creative subsystems attempt to anticipate the
  tastes of the buying public
• Collective selection symbolic alternatives are
  chosen over others
• Western Look
• New Wave
• Nouvelle Cuisine

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Behavioral Science Perspectives on Fashion

• Psychological models of fashion
• Conformity, variety seeking, attraction, etc.
• Shifting erogenous zones and fitness premium
• Economic models of fashion
• Supply and demand
• Parody display, prestige-exclusivity effect, and
  snob effect

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Behavioral Science Perspectives on Fashion (cont.)

• Sociological models of fashion
• Collective selection model (hip-hop and Goth)
• Trickle-down theory
• Mass fashion has replaced elite fashion
• Trickle-across effect
• Current fashions trickle up from lower classes

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Behavioral Science Perspectives on Fashion (cont.)

• A medical model of fashion
• Meme theory
• Memes that survive are distinctive and memorable
• Tipping point
• Cycles of fashion adoption
• Cabbage Patch dolls
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

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Normal Fashion Cycle

• Fashions tend to flow in a predictable sequence

Figure 17.4
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Fashion Life Cycles (cont.)

• Fashion acceptance cycle (using music as
  example)
• Introduction stage small number of music
  innovators hear a song
• Acceptance stage song enjoys increased
  visibility
• Regression stage song reaches stage of social
  saturation as it becomes overplayed
• Classic fashion with an extremely long
  acceptance cycle
• Fad short-lived fashion

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Comparison of Acceptance of Fads, Fashions, and
Classics
Figure 17.5
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Discussion

• Boots with six-inch heels are a fashion rage
  among young Japanese women. They are willing to
  risk twisted ankles, broken bones, bruised faces,
  and other dangers associated with the platform
  shoes.
• What is and what should be the role of fashion in
  our society? How important is it for people to be
  in style? What are the pros and cons of keeping
  up with the latest fashions? Do you believe that
  we are at the mercy of designers?

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Fad or Trend?

• Chryslers PT Cruiser and retro cars a fad or a
  trend?
• Guidelines for long-term trends
• Fits with basic lifestyle changes
• A real benefit should be evident
• Can be personalized
• Not a side effect or a carryover effect
• Important market segments adopt change

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Behavior of Fads
Figure 17.6
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Transferring Product Meanings to Other Cultures

• Innovations know no geographic boundaries
• Costly consequences of ignoring cultural
  sensitivities
• 1994 McDonalds reprinting Saudi Arabian flag on
  disposable packaging/promotions
• 2002 McDonalds litigation settlement for
  mislabeling French fries as being vegetarian
• 2002 McDonalds cancellation of McAfrika
• 2005 McDonalds Prosperity Burger

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Adopt a Standardized Strategy

• Starbucks standardized strategy worldwide
• Critics Starbucks obliterates local customs
• Café flaneurs and oppositional localists
• Ethics perspective develop one approach for
  multiple, homogenized markets
• Economies of scale benefit

? Click for Starbucks.com
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Adopt a Localized Strategy

• Disney learned cultural lessons
• Disneyland Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland
• Emic perspective stress on variations across
  cultures
• Each country is unique and has a national
  character
• Strategy must be tailored to each specific
  culture to make product acceptable to local tastes

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Cultural Differences Relevant to Marketers

• People around the world develop their own unique
  preferences
• Marketers must be aware of a cultures norms
  regarding sensitive topics such as taboos and
  sexuality
• Language barrier and back-translation
• Nothing sucks like an Electrolux
• Fresca is Mexican slang for lesbian

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Does Global Marketing Work?

• In practice, a homogenous world culture has met
  with mixed results
• Consumers in different countries do not use
  products the same way
• Significant cultural differences can show up
  within the same country
• Coca-Cola has been successful in crafting a
  single, international image

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Does Global Marketing Work? (cont.)

• Multicultural marketing efforts tend to succeed
  more with two types of consumer segments
• Affluent global citizens exposed to ideas
  around the world through travels, business
  contacts, and media experiences
• Young people influenced by MTV/other media

Click to view ? Quicktime video on Motorolas
global advertising
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Does Global Marketing Work? (cont.)

• Three dimensions of global brands
• Quality signal if a company has global reach, it
  must excel on quality
• Global myth brands are symbols of cultural
  ideals
• Social responsibility companies are expected to
  address social problems where they operate

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Consumer Segments Who Evaluate Global Brands

• Global citizens global success of a company is a
  signal of quality
• Global dreamers see global brands as quality
  products and readily buy them

• Antiglobals skeptical that global companies
  deliver higher-quality products
• Global agnostics dont base purchase decisions
  on a brands global attributes

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Id Like to Buy the World a Coke

• Western lifestyles associated with modernization
  and sophistication
• U.S. television inspires knockoffs around the
  world (e.g., The Apprentice)
• Also, U.S. television hits often start out as
  imported European concepts (e.g., Big Brother)
• Middle East protested/boycotted American
  companies and products after events of 9/11
• Critics in other countries Americanization of
  their cultures excessive materialism
• Opposition to a global fast-food culture

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Emerging Consumer Cultures in Transitional
Economies

• Western decadence appears to be infectious in
  foreign countries
• Globalized consumption ethic
• Ideal of material lifestyle and well-known brands
  that symbolize prosperity
• Rituals/product preferences in different cultures
  become homogenized (e.g., Christmas in China)
• Attaining consumer goods is not easy for those in
  transitional economies
• Loss of confidence/pride in local culture as well
  as alienation, frustration, increase in stress

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Emerging Consumer Culturesin Transitional
Economies (cont.)

• Creolization foreign influences integrate with
  local meanings
• Peruvian boys carry rocks painted like radios
• Chivas Regal wrappers on drums in highland Papua
  New Guinea
• Japanese use Western words for anything new and
  exciting
• I feel Coke and sound special