Effects of Culture to Marketing in Italy
Lappeenranta University of Technology
School of Business
AC40A0101 Cross-Cultural Marketing Strategies
Responsible Teacher Hanna Salojärvi
Effects of Culture to Marketing in Italy
29 November 2010
TABEL OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction 2 2. Cultural Characteristics 4 3. Hofstede’s dimensions 8 4. Implications for marketing 10 5. Conclusions 12 References 14
Introduction
The developing globalization process and companies orientation toward world markets lead to great challenges connected implementing “glocal” approach at markets of different countries. One of these challenges is creating proper and successful marketing strategy for particular country or region. There exist many reasons for it being rather complicated or even confusing task. We can think about geographical, political, economical, cultural etc aspects. But according to chapter 11 of the book “Understanding cross-cultural management” “… the importance of geographic frontiers and politics will gradually diminish because of changes in the economic environment and the evolution of consumer behavior. ” (Marie-Joelle Browaeys & Roger Price, 2008, p. 200). But we also understand that consumer behavior is to a certain degree dependent on people’s values and beliefs. In other words, it is closely related to culture peculiarities. And even if there are some process of uniforming and developing the consumer behavior all over the world, these differences will remain, and companies should take them into consideration in order to succeed in operating at certain market.
The main purpose of this paper is analyzing the culture peculiarities of the chosen country in order to define some specific important aspects to be considered while developing marketing strategy for the market.
Now, about country itself. So, journalist Anna Pavlovskaya in the magazine “Around the world” (in Russian “Vokrug Sveta” or “Вокруг света” ) describes Italy and Italians as rather
School of Business
AC40A0101 Cross-Cultural Marketing Strategies
Responsible Teacher Hanna Salojärvi
Effects of Culture to Marketing in Italy
29 November 2010
TABEL OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction 2 2. Cultural Characteristics 4 3. Hofstede’s dimensions 8 4. Implications for marketing 10 5. Conclusions 12 References 14
Introduction
The developing globalization process and companies orientation toward world markets lead to great challenges connected implementing “glocal” approach at markets of different countries. One of these challenges is creating proper and successful marketing strategy for particular country or region. There exist many reasons for it being rather complicated or even confusing task. We can think about geographical, political, economical, cultural etc aspects. But according to chapter 11 of the book “Understanding cross-cultural management” “… the importance of geographic frontiers and politics will gradually diminish because of changes in the economic environment and the evolution of consumer behavior. ” (Marie-Joelle Browaeys & Roger Price, 2008, p. 200). But we also understand that consumer behavior is to a certain degree dependent on people’s values and beliefs. In other words, it is closely related to culture peculiarities. And even if there are some process of uniforming and developing the consumer behavior all over the world, these differences will remain, and companies should take them into consideration in order to succeed in operating at certain market.
The main purpose of this paper is analyzing the culture peculiarities of the chosen country in order to define some specific important aspects to be considered while developing marketing strategy for the market.
Now, about country itself. So, journalist Anna Pavlovskaya in the magazine “Around the world” (in Russian “Vokrug Sveta” or “Вокруг света” ) describes Italy and Italians as rather
References: 1. Browaeys, M.-J., Price, R. (2008) Understanding cross-cultural management Pearson Education Limited, Pearson 2 (Pavlovskaya, A. (2003) Features of national character or unknown Italians. Around the world, 2, 29-31) 3 4. Bassetti, P.(2004) Italicity: Global and Local in Janni, P., McLean, G. .F (eds) The essence of Italian culture and the challenge of a global age. Cultural heritage and contemporary change. iv, 5. 167 5 6. Solli, M. (1999) Xenophobes guide to the Italians. !!!!! 1