Onkvisit S., Shaw J. International Marketing: Analysis and Strategy

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

27 Fred Zanpour

et al

.,“Global Reach and Local Touch: Achieving Cultural Fitness and TV Advertising,”

Journal

of Advertising Research

34 (September/October 1994): 35–63.

28 David K. Tse, June Francis, and Jan Walls, “Cultural Differences in Conducting Intra- and Inter-Cultural

Negotiations: A Sino-Canadian Comparison,”

Journal of International Business Studies

25 (No. 3, 1994):

537–55.

29 John L. Graham, Leonid I. Evenko, and Mahesh N. Rajan,“An Empirical Comparison of Soviet and American

Business Negotiations,”

Journal of International Business Studies

23 (No. 3, 1992): 387–418.

30 Karol Stonger,“If You’re Saying It with Flowers, Make Sure the Message Is Clear,”

San José Mercury News

February 8, 1990.

31 Laurence Jacobs

et al

., “Cross-Cultural Colour Comparisons: Global Marketers Beware!”

International

Marketing Review

8 (No. 3, 1991): 21–30.

32 Annamma Joy, “Gift Giving in Hong Kong and the Continuum of Social Ties,”

Journal of Consumer Research

28 (September 2001): 239–56.

33 Michael Hui

et al

.,“Equivalence of Lifestyle Dimensions across Four Major Subcultures in Canada,”

Journal

of International Consumer Marketing

5 (No. 3, 1993): 15–35.

34 Julie Snyder, “Promoting Consumer Goods and Services in Quebec, Canada’s Distinct, French-Speaking

Market,”

Business America

, November 1, 1993, 22–3.

35 “More Than Half of State’s Newborns Are Latinos,”

San José Mercury News

, February 6, 2003.

36 “Crest’s Prime-Time Ad Targets Hispanics,”

San José Mercury News

, February 22, 2003.

37 Tomasz Lenartowicz and Kendall Roth, “Does Subculture within a Country Matter? A Cross-Cultural Study

of Motivational Domains and Business Performance in Brazil,”

Journal of International Business Studies

32 (second quarter, 2001): 305–25.

38 Youn-Kyung Kim and Jikyeong Kang, “The Effects of Ethnicity and Product on Purchase Decision Making,”

Journal of Advertising Research

(March to April 2001): 39–48.

39 Scott Koslow, Prem N. Shamdasani, and Ellen E. Touchstone, “Exploring Language Effects in Ethnic

Advertising: A Sociolinguistic Perspective,”

Journal of Consumer Research

20 (March 1994): 575–85.

40 Mark R. Forehand and Rohit Deshpande, “What We See Makes Us Who We Are: Priming Ethnic Self-

Awareness and Advertising Response,”

Journal of Marketing Research

38 (August 2001): 336–48.

41 “In Pursuit of El Dorado,”

Credit Card Management

(October 2000): 61–8.

42 “Avon Courts Latinas with New Look,”

San José Mercury News

, October 4, 2002.

186

CULTURE

1111

10111

20111

45111

187

Oh what power . . . to see ourselves as others see us!

Robert Burns

CHAPTER OUTLINE

■ Perspectives on consumer behavior

■ Motivation

■ Learning

■ Personality

 Personality traits

 Hofstede’s national cultures

 Clustering: commonality and diversity

■ Psychographics

■ Perception

 Formation of perception

 Country of origin and perceived product quality

■ Attitude

■ Social class

■ Group

■ Family

■ Opinion leadership

■ Diffusion process of innovations

■ Conclusion

■ Case 7.1 Beneath Hijab: marketing to the veiled women of Iran

Consumer behavior in the

international context

Psychological and social dimensions

Chapter 7

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

PURPOSE OF CHAPTER

Consumers’ perceptions are highly subjective, and consumers can be quite unpredictable.The complex nature

of consumers makes the study and understanding of consumer behavior imperative. Sweden and Colombia

have both attempted to affect consumer perceptions. The Juan Valdez campaign of the Federation of

Colombian Coffee Growers has been successful in creating a desirable image for its product and using it

to communicate with consumers. Volvo, likewise, has successfully nurtured an image of safety.

Because the inﬂuence of culture has already been discussed in depth in Chapter 6, this chapter covers

other relevant concepts. The focus is on the major approaches used to study consumer behavior. The basic

purpose of this chapter is to acknowledge the role that determinants other than culture play in inﬂuencing

consumer behavior. The chapter thus examines the psychological and social dimensions, and these include

motivation, learning, personality, psychographics, perception, attitude, social class, group, family, opinion

leadership, and the diffusion process of innovations.

To compete with Brazil and Mexico, the Federation of

Colombian Coffee Growers needed an image (see

Figure 7.1). Based on its composite Colombian coffee

man, it wanted a Latin name that was both pro-

nounceable and easy to remember for Americans.Thus

Juan was chosen as the ﬁrst name because it is easy

and rhymes with one (coffee beans are picked one by

one). Since Rodriguez is too complicated a name for

Americans, Valdez was picked as the last name. A

nationwide search was arranged for a Colombian

actor who would ﬁt the American conception of the

Latin male.The screening led to Carlos Sanchez, a rel-

atively impoverished, university-educated silk-screen

artist and sometime actor. The Federation’s market-

ing campaign has been very effective.

Sweden, a country of nine million people, has long,

harsh, and dark winters to go with its moose-ridden

roads; yet it has one of the world’s lowest trafﬁc fatal-

ity rates.This should not be surprising because safety

is part of Sweden’s heritage. Volvo and Saab are well

known for automotive-safety innovations. Volvo, in

particular, is world famous for its automotive safety

rather than style (see Figure 7.2). The emphasis on

safety guides the car makers to exceed the legal crash-

test requirements. Both have studied real-world

accidents that have resulted in such innovations as

theSaab active head restraint. Saab has even placed

MARKETING ILLUSTRATION IT’S NOT A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL

Figure 7.1 Colombian coffee and product

image

Source:

Courtesy of the National Federation of Coffee

Growers of Colombia.

188

1111

10111

20111

45111

189

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

the ignition key in a center console so as to prevent a

driver from suffering knee injuries in head-on colli-

sions. The safety expertise was a signiﬁcant reason

for Ford to buy Volvo in 1999 and GM to wholly buy

Saab in 2000.

Sources:

“The Real Juan Valdez,”

San José Mercury News

March 27, 1989;“Coffee Growers to Open US Stores,”

San

José Mercury News

, November 29, 2003; and “Why Swedish

Means Safe,”

San José Mercury News

, April 11, 2003.

Figure 7.2 Volvo’s product positioning

Source:

Reprinted with permission of Volvo North America Corp.

PERSPECTIVES ON CONSUMER

BEHAVIOR

Consumer behavior may be deﬁned as a study

of human behavior within the consumer role and

includes all the steps in the decision-making

process.The study must go beyond the explicit act

of purchase to include an examination of less

observable processes, as well as a discussion of why,

where, and how a particular purchase occurs.

Domestically, marketing scholars have employed

a variety of techniques and concepts, including the

cultural approach, to study consumer behavior.

Yet consumer study on an international basis has

employed the cultural approach almost exclusively

without much regard for other psychological and

social concepts.This is a very curious approach since

it is the norm for virtually all consumer behavior

textbooks to treat culture as only one of the many

theoretical concepts which can affect purchase and

the other behavioral dimensions.

It is a questionable practice to rely on culture as

the sole determinant of behavior or as the only

concept that largely, if not entirely, explains behav-

ior. Culture undoubtedly affects the psychological

and social processes and thus affects consumer

behavior. However, too much emphasis is placed on

a single concept (i.e., culture). Consumer behavior

research must include international dimensions.

Differences in behavioral dimensions among

national groups “should not be attributed to differ-

ences in culture unless components of culture have

been speciﬁed.”

For group mean differences to be

meaningful, there should be some explanation as to

why these differences should exist. Furthermore,

there may be a need to develop an international con-

sumer behavior model so that studies of consumer

behavior in various countries can be more system-

atic and better coordinated.

The major behavioral sciences relevant to con-

sumer study are psychology, sociology, and cultural

anthropology. Psychology, with the individual as

its central unit of analysis, is the study of individual

and interpersonal behavior. Behavior is governed

by a person’s cognitions, such as values, attitudes,

experiences, needs, and other psychological phe-

nomena. Purchase, then, becomes a function of the

psychological view of products, and the consumer

buys a product not only for consumption but also

because of a perception of how a product can be

used to communicate with other people. Some

psychological concepts relevant to the study of con-

sumer behavior are motivation, learning, personal-

ity, perception, and attitude.

Sociology is the study of groups and human

interactions.The unit of analysis is not the individ-

ual but rather the group.The group, consisting of a

set of individuals who interact over time, is import-

ant because it can exert a signiﬁcant inﬂuence on a

person’s preferences and consumption behavior. In

many instances, it may be useful for a marketer to

view consumers as a group. For example, a family,

not an individual, often makes a purchase decision

that affects all members of the family group.

Important sociological concepts are reference

group and family.

Cultural anthropology is the study of human

culture.Thus, the analytic perspective may be quite

large. Culture involves an aggregate, social category

level (i.e., a large group), and the social categories

are signiﬁcant in the sense that they inﬂuence con-

sumers’ cognitive and personality development.The

concepts from this discipline usually included in

the analysis of consumer behavior are culture, sub-

culture, and social class.

MOTIVATION

Motivation is fundamental in initiating consumer

behavior. Motivation may be viewed as a drive that

is directed by a motive formed in relation to a par-

ticular goal. Once the motive–drive relationship is

developed, the consumer initiates some forms of

motivated behavior to satisfy a previously recog-

nized need.

Consumer motives are determined largely by

buying habits, though motives can vary, and it is

important to recognize the various types of motives.

Motives may be classiﬁed as rational and nonra-

tional. Examples of rational motives are price,

190

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

durability, and economy in operation.Nonrational

appeals, in comparison, include prestige, comfort,

and pleasure. Figure 7.3 is an automobile advertise-

ment that combines both emotional and logical

motives.

The problem with the conventional classiﬁcation

(i.e., rational vs. emotional) is that a consumer may

not recognize emotional motives and may have a

tendency to rationalize personal behavior by assign-

ing only rational and socially acceptable motives. In

addition, the process of classiﬁcation is not always

straightforward. Convenience, for instance, can be

both rational and nonrational at the same time.

In the end, the success of a product is greatly

affected by whether its target customers are prop-

erly motivated.Whether a motive is rational or irra-

tional is not particularly important. What is

important is to identify speciﬁc motives relevant

for marketing purposes. A critical task is to select,

carefully and properly, a relevant motive for the

purpose of product promotion. In addition, the rel-

evance of a particular motive may vary across

1111

10111

20111

45111

191

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Figure 7.3 Buying motives

Source:

Reprinted with permission

of Saab-Scania of America, Inc.

countries. For example, one study of youths in

Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, and Hawaii

compared their beliefs in money, business ethics,

quanxi, and machiavellian personality. Surprisingly,

Canadians believe that money can work wonders –

even more so than their Hong Kong and Singapore

counterparts.

LEARNING

Like all habits, food and drink habits are learned.

Before World War II, the British were accustomed

to drinking tea, not coffee. Then along came the

American troops, who brought the American taste

for coffee – at ﬁrst a relatively light, almost blond

coffee. Before long, Britons had learned to drink

coffee too. In another example, a large lunch with

wine presents no problem to a Swiss, but the same

will put an American to sleep. On the other hand,

American-style cocktails may prove to be too

much for Europeans, who are accustomed to milder

drinks. Marketers must take these habits into

consideration.

Motives,cultural norms,and consumption habits

are all learned.Therefore, a marketer should under-

stand the learning process. Learning is a change in

behavior that occurs over time relative to a given set

of external stimulus conditions. Baskin-Robbins, as

the ﬁrst fast-food franchise in Vietnam, has to teach

the Vietnamese about the concept of fast food.When

the ice cream parlor ﬁrst opened, most Vietnamese

customers walked in and sat down, expecting to

be waited on. When they were asked to go to the

counter, some felt insulted and left. In addition

the Vietnamese are accustomed to linger at café

tables and are thus not used to having to pay imme-

diately. Naturally, a number of them got angry and

felt that Baskin-Robbins did not trust them by

asking them to pay for the ice cream immediately.

Interestingly, one learned behavior is that the rum

raisin ﬂavor, not that popular in the plain vanilla US

market, is quite popular among the Vietnamese as

well as many other Asians.

A marketer can play a signiﬁcant role in facilitat-

ing the learning process by using a variety of

rewards to encourage learning. Infant formula, as

192

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Indonesia is the world’s largest Islamic country.

Halal, an Arabic word for “allowed,” is a label for

foods that comply with Islamic laws.

MSG (monosodium glutamate) is a taste enhancer

that is used by many millions of Asians every single

day. Ajinomoto Co., a Japanese food giant, is a dom-

inant brand. Over the years,it has had to combat many

rumors that cast doubts on the quality or safety of

its MSG product. The company’s Indonesian sub-

sidiary, PT Ajinomoto, had one big problem in

Indonesia in 2001. The Ulema’s Council, a religious

body determining whether food products comply with

Islamic law, alleged that the Ajinomoto seasoning

contained enzymes grown on pork fat.The police even

detained eight directors (including three Japanese)

for questioning.

Ajinomoto announced that, while its subsidiary

used an enzyme from pork to make four products, the

enzyme itself was not in the ﬁnal products. The con-

troversy forced the company to remove hundreds of

tons of its products from the market. Indonesia’s

president, in defense of the Ajinomoto, stated that the

council erred in its ﬁndings. President Abdurrahman

Wahid also mentioned that political forces had

unjustly blamed Ajinomoto so as to incite Muslim

unrest. After the president’s announcement, police

released the company’s Japanese vice-president from

custody.

Sources:

“Indonesia Releases Ajinomoto Ofﬁcial,”

Asian

Wall Street Journal

, January 11, 2001; “Wahid Blasts Ban

of Food Product,”

Asian Wall Street Journal

, January 10,

2001.

IT’S THE LAW 7.1 FOOD AND RELIGION

an example, is useful in many non-Western coun-

tries for well-to-do women who do not want to

bother with breast-feeding. Poor women seek the

reward of using this status symbol and of having

fatter babies – a beneﬁt implied by this product.

Furthermore, young mothers like the prestige of

using American or European products.

PERSONALITY

Personality study has long been a subject of interest

to marketers due to the assumption that product

purchases are an extension of a consumer’s person-

ality. Figure 7.4 makes a reference to a person’s per-

sonality as a factor in choosing a car. Personality,

derived from a Latin word meaning “personal” or

“relating to person,” is the individual characteristics

that make a person unique as well as consistent in

adjustments to a changing environment. Personality

is an integrated system that holds attitude, motiva-

tion, and perception together. To study a personal-

ity is to study the person as a whole – not only the

separate, individual elements that make up a person.

Personality traits

Personality traits are relatively stable qualities, but

they do vary in degree from person to person.

Because personality study applies to a person rather

than to a group, it is difﬁcult to make generaliza-

tions about personality traits among people of a par-

ticular country. Nevertheless, it is useful to consider

the concept of national character, which states

that “people of each nation have a distinctive, endur-

ing pattern of behavior and/or personality charac-

teristics.”

The English, for example, are highly

impulse-restrained and unassertive.

Despite the difﬁculty, particular personality traits

seem dominant in certain countries. Koreans see

themselves as being driven by two complementary

passions that are uniquely theirs:han (bitterness) and

jong (devoted love).The interplay of the two explains

Korea’s ability to be at once intensely productive

and violent, to both drive and stall a society, and to

be capable simultaneously of love and hate.

While both South Korea and Japan display a

mixture of ancient and modern Asian cultures, they

also differ in a number of ways. In spite of South

Korea’s Confucian culture and the bowing, defer-

ence, traditions, and formality, the Koreans are

also passionate, emotional, intense, energetic, emo-

tional, fun-loving, and impatient. In fact, one of the

phrases that is heard most often in South Korea is

“balli, balli” (hurry, hurry). Compared to Tokyo,

Seoul is more chaotic.

One study used the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory

to contrast Canadian and Japanese MBA students

and found differences in cognitive style.

On the

judging–perceivingdimension,theCanadians sought

fast decisions and rushed to closure on data collec-

tion, while such actions may frustrate the Japanese

who showed a preference for larger amounts of

information. On the thinking–feeling dimension,

the Japanese, as expected, preferred forming per-

sonal relationships before business was transacted.

One personality trait that has gained recent

attention is consumer ethnocentrism.

Adapted

from the general concept of ethnocentrism, con-

sumer ethnocentrism explains that, due to patriotic

and nationalistic sentiments as well as a personal

level of prejudice against imports, some consumers

feel that it is inappropriate or even immoral to buy

imported products. Highly ethnocentric consumers

thus tend to buy domestic products.Table 7.1 shows

the CETSCALE which is used to measure consumer

ethnocentrism.

The national markets also possess some other

personality characteristics which may affect mar-

keting strategies. Scotland set up Project Galore

to develop a strategy to promote the commercial

power of Scottishness. Based on the reactions

received in Scotland and other parts of the world,

tenacity is a true Scottish characteristic. Integrity is

another core value, since Scotland and the world

believe that Scotland has this attribute to a greater

extent than most, if not all, other countries. Spirit

is another virtue that deﬁnes Scotland. However,

although the Scots (as well as the English) believe

that they have inventiveness, the rest of the world

does not seem to subscribe to the same notion, since

1111

10111

20111

45111

193

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

194

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Figure 7.4 Personality and car ownership

Source:

Reprinted with permission of Saab-Scania of America, Inc.

they do not have enough knowledge of Scotland’s

inventiveness.

While the European Union is unifying markets,

it will take time to construct a uniﬁed set of

European marketing theories. There is still a wide

divergence in terms of economic development

levels, languages, religions, and legal systems.

Generalizations are both difﬁcult and dangerous.

Marketers must still consider a country’s history,

national character, and cognitive styles.

Hofstede’s national cultures

Hofstede has strongly indicated that ethnocentric

management theories (i.e., based on a particular

country’s value system) are untenable. Based on his

study of work-related values in ﬁfty countries,

national cultures have four largely independent

dimensions: (1) individualism vs. collectivism, (2)

large or small power distance, (3) strong or weak

uncertainty avoidance, and (4) masculinity vs. fem-

ininity. Power distance describes how a society

treats unequal people.“Collectivist countries always

show large power distance, but individualist coun-

tries do not always show small power distance.”

Regarding uncertainty avoidance, some countries

have weak uncertainty avoidance in the sense that

they accept uncertainty and they are thus able to

take risks easily. In contrast, strong uncertainty

avoidance societies create institutions to offer

1111

10111

20111

45111

195

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Table 7.1 CETSCALE. 17-item CETSCALE

Item Reliability

1 American people should always buy American-made products instead of imports. 0.65

2 Only those products that are unavailable in the USA should be imported. 0.63

3 Buy American-made products. Keep America working. 0.51

4 American products, ﬁrst, last, and foremost. 0.65

5 Purchasing foreign-made products is unAmerican. 0.64

6 It is not right to purchase foreign products, because it puts Americans out of jobs. 0.72

7 A real American should always buy American-made products. 0.70

8 We should purchase products manufactured in America instead of letting other countries

get rich off us. 0.67

9 It is always best to purchase American products. 0.59

10 There should be very little trading or purchasing of goods from other countries unless out

of necessity. 0.53

11 Americans should not buy foreign products, because this hurts American business and causes

unemployment. 0.67

12 Curbs should be put on all imports. 0.52

13 It may cost me in the long-run but I prefer to support American products. 0.55

14 Foreigners should not be allowed to put their products on our markets. 0.52

15 Foreign products should be taxed heavily to reduce their entry into the USA. 0.58

16 We should buy from foreign countries only those products that we cannot obtain within our

own country. 0.60

17 American consumers who purchase products made in other countries are responsible for

putting their fellow Americans out of work. 0.65

Notes

1 Response format is 7-point Likert-type scale (strongly agree = 7, strongly disagree = 1). Range of scores is from 17 to 119.

2 Calculated from conﬁrmatory factor analysis of data from four-areas study.

Source:

Terence A. Shimp and Subhash Sharma,“Consumer Ethnocentrism: Construction and Validation of the CETSCALE,”

Journal of Marketing Research

24 (August 1987): 282.