How savvy is your company in International Marketing? 10 clues to get your International Marketing act right for 2010

We had the opportunity to Interview Marieke de Mooij Ph.D. (Netherlands), the author of several publications on the influence of culture on marketing and advertising. Her book Global Marketing and Advertising, Understanding Cultural Paradoxes (third edition, 2010), Sage Publications (USA and UK) is used by practitioners and universities worldwide. A more specialized book is Consumer Behavior and Culture. Consequences for Global Marketing and Advertising (2003), Sage Publications (USA and UK).

Excerpts from the indepth telephone Interview between Sanjoo Malhotra from itim and Marieke de Mooij, edited by Jerry Vastano.

1. You said that global advertising is a true myth of the past century? What do you mean?

The myth began as a result of an article published by Harvard Professor Ted Levitt (“The Globalization of Markets”) in the early 1980’s in which he promoted the standardization of marketing and advertising and offering identical products worldwide. This was based on the assumption that there are universal values.

The myth has to do with this assumed existence of universal values and emotions. Human values, attitudes, the concept of self, motives, emotions are all culture-bound. When presented in an abstract way, they are seemingly universal - such as love, a mother’s love, happiness, and health. However, how these values are actually expressed differs on a cultural level. People have different associations with what may be the same abstract term. The manner in which people express love, what makes people happy or how they deal with their health (actively/passively) varies with culture. For example, Americans are highly concerned with happiness or instant gratification. Instant gratification is less important for Asians and the value of happiness has lower priority.

read the entire Interview here.

Going local with National Geographic

AL: National Geographic has begun publishing local language editions and has been extremely successful. Would you say the decision was made too early or too late?

MK: The idea to start the local language editions is 10 years old. To a certain extent, National Geographic was one of the innovators in this field, because no other magazine published local language editions before 1995, so they had to discover the whole technology and the organisation skills to do it.

AL: So the answer to that question could be “too early” if they were the innovators…So what do you personally perceive as cultural differences?.

MK: From my point of view, there are two sets of cultural differences as I understand them. First, different cultures see things in different ways. I mean that we can imagine that some Europeans can see the WWII in a different way from other Europeans. Second, cultural differences are strongly linked to different values. For example, there is a long tradition in Eastern Europe that people rely strongly on the state. They think that the state is there to solve most of their problems. On the other hand, in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the state is not seen as something that should interfere with life of individuals and individuals should take care of themselves. The reasons for these two differences are, of course, historical and very deep. Another issue is egalitarian values. They are stronger in Eastern than in Western Europe. So when one conducts business, all these differences should be taken into account.

read the entire Interview here.