The Impact of National Cultures on Management Practices

Article By:   Lolita Lacôte – Masters Student - AMOS Paris

 As we saw before, there are a millions of different between countries, even when we compare similar economic countries: France, USA and Japan. In addition, we have to pay attention about each people into each country that make a lot of work for marketing managers. Actually, the marketing is based on the customers, on their needs, their behaviors, their acts, their demands,… If everybody could act and reflect like anybody else it would be easy, but there are a ton of differences.

The culture is a part of each person that makes who we are and how we think. More and more, with Medias, new technologies, social Medias etc, people are influenced by sorts of culture. In addition to our education, our values that we have learned during our youth, the social environment makes us a specific culture. We could say that we have two kinds of cultures: the social one and the personal one. Each of them creates our behaviors and our needs. Like the marketing is based on our needs, the marketing has to work with cultural aspects.

Globalization and new technologies make the importance of cultures stronger. To be efficient, a marketing strategy needs to transmit the right message. Because of cultures, a same strategy, a same picture could be seen in different ways. For example, a sand desert for Chinese people reflects the solitude, the dirt while for French is more about travelling, sun, and liberty. That is why companies have to really be careful about the cultural significations of everything.

Beyond the different perceptions of strategies between each country, some tools or images are completely prohibited or completely bad for a country when it is not the same in another. Those differences between areas make a lot of work for marketing managers. They can use marketing researchers to help them. But, again, that costs time and money for companies. If we think beyond the marketing for customers, companies have to make its internal and external strategies in order to accomodate cultures. 

As I said, each character has his own culture, so even during a B to B exchange, we have to think about the cultural aspect of our offers. Well, globalization can be really interesting, the difference between cultures is really rewarding, but that is also a lot of work and money. Companies have to spend money to conduct marketing research to be sure to transmit the right message to reach the right target. They also have to work with it. But, they have still the choice between using an adaptability strategy or a standardization strategy. For the first strategy, you will adapt your strategies to each area with different needs and demands; for the second one, you will make the choice to keep the same (strong) strategy for all of your markets. Both have advantages and inconveniences, even if the adaptability is more and more used because of the customers’ needs and the growth of the personalization trend.

Sources :

 https://www.lonelyplanet.fr/destinations/asie/japon/culture

http://www.cia-france.fr/blog/culture-traditions-francaises/

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/cultural-influences-marketing-strategies-26121.html - Geert Hofstede

http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/impact-culture-market-strategy-segmentation-26371.html

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/cultural_differences_europe_usa.shtml

https://www.google.fr/amp/amp.livescience.com/39149-french-culture.html

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/when-does-culture-matter-marketing