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Culture

- Culture is the collective values, customs,

norms, arts, social institutions and intellectual
achievements of a particular society.

- Cultural values express the collective

principles, standards and priorities of a
community.

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 Culture and Marketing

• Culture’s continuous evolution

• Cultural beliefs reflect societal needs

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 Culture’s continuous evolution

• Marketers must always monitor cultural changes

to discover new opportunities and abandon
markets that have “dried up” because of cultural
changes. Marketers should periodically
reconsider why consumers are doing what they
do, who are the purchasers and the users of their
offerings, when they do their shopping, how and
where they can be reached by the media, and
what new product and service needs are
emerging.
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 Culture expresses and satisfies the needs
of societies
a) It offers order, direction and guidance for problem solving
by providing methods of satisfying physiological, personal, and
social needs.
b) Culture determines whether a product is a necessity or
discretionary luxury.
c) Culture dictates which clothes are suitable for different
occasions.
d) When a specific standard no longer satisfies the members
of a society or reflects its needs, it is modified or replaced.

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Learning Objective 11.2
11.2 To understand language, symbols, and rituals
as expressions of a learned culture.

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 Learning Cultural Values

• Formal learning
• Informal learning
• Technical learning
• Enculturation (consumer socialization) vs.
acculturation
• Marketing’s influence

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There are three distinct forms of learning:
- Formal learning—adults and older siblings teach
a young family member “how to behave.”
-Informal learning—a child learns primarily by
imitating the behavior of selected others.
- Technical learning—teachers instruct the child
in an educational environment as to what, how, and
why it should be done.

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- The learning of one’s own culture is known as
enculturation.
A- Key components of one’s enculturation are the
family and consumer socialization.
b. Educational institutions teach arts, sciences,
civics and skills.
a. Religious institutions provide spiritual and moral
guidance and values.
- The learning of a new or foreign culture is known
as acculturation.
• A consumer can be a “foreigner” in his or her own
country.
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Marketing’s influence on cultural learning:
- Promotional messages are powerful vehicles
for imparting cultural values.
- Products can become cultural icons and help
provide a cultural identity.
-Social media conveys and shapes cultural
values; influential people communicate.
In advertisements, cultural values are not only
depicted in the advertising copy but are also
coded in the visual imagery, colors, music, and
other nonverbal elements of an advertisement.

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 Language and Symbols

• Verbal symbols
• Nonverbal symbols
– Product
– Promotion
– Price
– Stores at which product is available

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Example of symbols:
•Cadillac has symbolic meaning
to some it suggests a fine luxury automobile,
to others it implies wealth and status

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Learning Objective 11.3
11.3 To understand how to measure the influence
of culture on consumer behavior.

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 Measuring Cultural Values

• Content analysis
• Field observation
• Depth interviews
• Focus groups
• Questionnaires

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Content analysis focuses on the content of verbal,
written, and pictorial communications. It can be
used to:
Identify the intentions, focus, or communication
trends of an individual, group or institution.
Describe attitudinal and behavioral responses to
communications.
Determine psychological or emotional state of
persons or groups.

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When examining a specific society,
anthropologists frequently study cultures through
field observation, which consists of observing the
daily behavior or selected members of a society
and has the following characteristics:
1- It takes place within a natural environment.
2- It is performed sometimes without the
subjects’ awareness.
3- It focuses on observation of behavior.

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• Instead of just observing behavior, researchers
sometimes become participant-observers, or active
members of the environment they are studying.

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• In addition to fieldwork methods
, depth interviews and focus groups are also
quite often employed by marketers to study
social and cultural changes.

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 Learning Objective 11.5
11.5 To understand green marketing and ecologically
responsible consumption.

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Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education
 Subculture
A distinct cultural group that exists as
an identifiable segment within a larger,
more complex society. A subculture has
beliefs, values, and customers that set
them apart from the other members of
the same society.

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Society’s Cultural Profile

Two elements:
•Unique beliefs, values
and customs of specific
subcultures
•Central or core cultural
values and customs shared
by most of the population,
regardless of subcultural
memberships

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