What effect national cultural has on the marketing strategies of business - Essay Example

This essay discusses that as businesses expand into the international markets, it is imperative to better understand why a business, successful in one country, fails in its foreign markets. One major reason is that firms fail to understand and account for national cultural differences. This led to the 1990 mandate by the Marketing Science Institute to examine national cultural effects on market orientation for the firm. From this mandate came numerous theoretical and empirical works. The works studied two main areas, the affects of national culture on business performance and the affects of national culture on marketing efforts.

Academic works on national cultural effects on marketing efforts lead to a split in the theory. It is argued for the globalization strategy that predicted consumer tastes would converge and marketing efforts should be directed toward standardization of products and marketing strategies. On the other side, Quelch and Hoff, Douglas and Wind, and de Mooij & Hofstede contend that standardized global markets are a myth and that each nation requires firms to adapt and customize their products and marketing strategies.

Both theories have strong arguments and empirical evidence to support their claims. Proceeding from the premise that retail marketing strategies are a key component to revenue generation for the retailer, this study, especially when it comes to retailing, subscribes to the theory that national culture should have an affect on the marketing strategy of the firm. These strategies can mean the success or failure of the company. To market effectively to the consumer, the marketer must understand what motivates the consumer to purchase at their store and not their competitors. 1.2 Statement of the Problem Numerous authors have studied various market theories and models with respect to national cultural effects.

Their works looked at the specifics of marketing tasks to culture (micromarketing view) and the marketing concept to culture (macro marketing view). However, there are no significant works on the view between the micromarketing and the macromarketing in which the realm of marketing strategy falls. One reason for this is that it is typically a more difficult area to study. Each type of business dictates a different marketing strategy. It is easier to study very specific items, such as culture to product development (Hill & Still 1984; Imai & Takeuchi 1985; Nakata 1996), or culture to product choice.

(Fawcett 1999; Luna & Gupta 2001) Or study very broad topics, such as national culture to market orientation. (Deshpande, Farley & Webster, 1993) However, the study of marketing strategy is between the micro and macro marketing views making it difficult to develop theories that are testable. Overall marketing strategy is too broad to practically study, yet not homogeneous enough to relate to as a whole. Therefore, to study this area requires the creation of artificial boundaries. Since it is such a difficult area to study authors have not published any significant research that may lead to a better understanding of why businesses have failed in their international efforts.

Moreover, there is still debate among the academic community concerning the relevance of national culture in regards to customization versus standardization of products and marketing efforts. (Levitt, 1983; Ohrnae, 1989; Yip 1989; Deadrick, 1997; Olsen 2001) 1.3 Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study is to determine what effect national cultural has on the marketing strategies of business. Since marketing strategy is different for each type of business the only way to successfully study marketing strategy to national culture is to limit the study to one specific type of business.

In this paper, the author looks to relate the marketing str