This document presents a framework for understanding cross-cultural consumer behavior. It discusses how culture, manifested in symbols, values, heroes and rituals, shapes consumer behavior. The framework integrates existing research and can help marketers better understand foreign consumers. It distinguishes between emic and etic definitions of culture - an emic view focuses on understanding from the culture's perspective, while an etic view compares cultures. The framework identifies areas needing further research to understand the relationships between cultural manifestations and dimensions of consumer behavior.

1. An Integrative Framework for
Cross-Cultural Consumer
Behavior

2. The purpose is for the marketers to have a
better understanding of the new international
markets and the cross cultural factors
influencing consumer behavior.

3.  Trigger for the study was changing marketplaces.
 Alternatives were rising of a single product.
 International competition was pushing local markets to
compete in multicultural environment.
 Marketers needed to understand how culture shapes
consumer behavior.
 Marketers needed a standard through which they could
understand the foreign consumers.
 Existing models were too complicated to put into practice.
 Strong conceptual frameworks were needed to have a
better understanding of the foreign consumers.

4.  The twentieth century marketers were challenged by the
overwhelming multicultural marketplaces.
 Globalization was opening newer markets for consumers.
 Foreign consumers had there own cultural values which
were not understood by the marketers.
 Communication media was developing rapidly and thus was
exposing consumers to alternatives.
 Previous models did not gave the marketers substantial
knowledge of how the cultural dimensions affect consumer
behavior.

5.  Globalization has caused dramatic changes to business
practices around the world.
 Globalization brings about a borderless world.
 Globalization leads to the interconnection between the
countries of different culture, cast and heritage.
 It drives people to change their ways of living, prompts firms
to change their ways of conducting business, and, spurs
nations to establish new national policies.
 Firms that respond to these trends have been found to
improve their performance.
 Globalization enables firms to outsource and find customers
around the world, e.g., the auto and electronics industries.
 Globalization can be broadly defined as social, political and
economic changes that we all adapt to.

6. Globalization has both positive and
negative impacts:
POSITIVE IMPACTS
NEGATIVE IMPACTS

7. There is a huge Impact of Globalization which
can be divided into:
CULTURAL IMPACT
ECONOMIC IMPACT
POLITCAL IMPACT

8.  Consumer Behavior Across Culture is a powerful
source in regulating Human Behavior.
 Offering a dimentionalization of culture which is both
easy to operate and theoretically detailed.
 Providing a widely accepted definition of consumer
behavior in terms of its components instead of only
listing consumer behavior which may or may not be
affected by culture.
 Completely integrating and translating current
research in light of the interactions between cultural
manifestations and consumer behavior.

9. “ The collective programming of the
mind which distinguishes the
members of one group or category of
people from another”.

10.  The model suggests that culture affects consumer behavior
which may support the manifestations of culture.
 These manifestations include Symbols, Values, Heroes and
Rituals that any culture has of its own.
 Symbols are the broad category of process and objects that
carry a meaning that is unique to a group of people.
 Values drive an individuals behavior. For instance happiness
would certainly change the behavior.
 Hero’s refer to individual alive or dead or be they imaginary
which posses certain characteristics that are highly prized in a
culture.
 Rituals are sometimes mistakenly interpreted as behavior of
religious significance.

11.  Emic definition of culture is it focuses upon the
understanding issues from the viewpoint of the subjects
being studied.
 Culture is defined emically as ‘THE LENS” through which all
the phenomena are seen.
 Emic approaches to culture do not intend to directly
compare two or more differing cultures but promote a
complete understanding of the culture of study through
“THICK DESCRIPTION”
 The methods utilized in conducting emic research provide
“CULTURE RICH INFORMATION”

12.  The comparison of one culture with another is an Etic
definition of culture.
 Etic definition of culture is the collective programming of the
mind which distinguishes the members of one group from
another.
 In this approach researchers generally look for universal or
cultural free theories and concepts.
 This approach is typical of cross-cultural psychology and
other comparative social sciences.

13.  The two definitions of culture Emic and Etic can be considered
as two sides of the same coin.
 The choice of emic versus etic approaches depends on several
important factors including the nature of research question, the
researcher’s resources and training and the purpose of the
study.
 Difference between the two approaches:
The difference between emic and etic is that emic is the
perspective somebody native to the area has of the area while
etic is the perspective an outsider has of the area.
 By utilizing the research provided by both approaches, we gain
a more complete understanding of the culture of interest.

15.  The model suggests that culture affects consumer behavior
which may support the manifestations of culture.
 These manifestations include Symbols, Values, Heroes and
Rituals that any culture has of its own.
 Symbols are the broad category of process and objects that
carry a meaning that is unique to a group of people.
 Values drive an individuals behavior. For instance happiness
would certainly change the behavior.
 Hero’s refer to individual alive or dead or be they imaginary
which posses certain characteristics that are highly prized in a
culture.
 Rituals are sometimes mistakenly interpreted as behavior of
religious significance.

16. Cultures in which following tradition is
considered a deadly value may have relatively
slow adoption. In contrast, cultures in which
innovativeness is seen as an important value
will have much faster adoption cycles.

17. In advertising research, the resource matching
hypothesis predicts that an ad's effectiveness
depends on finding a balance between the
required and available resources to process
the ad.

18.  Rituals and consumer behavior
Consumer purchase models relying on scanner data which
incorporate variables such as price, promotions or
advertising may need to be generalized to include cultural
variables.

19.  Heroes influence the cognitive processes of
consumers.
Celebrity endorsement operates as a process of
meaning transfer.
Persona of the celebrity from celebrity into
product finally, from product to consumer.
Cultural specific heroes and consumer behaviour
has effect on consumer decision making
Family peer influence in consumer decision .

20.  Cultural differences in social groups materialized in four
manifestations.
 Values, Symbols, Rituals and Heroes.
 Values have received most of the attention.
 Symbols and Ritual must be more clearly understood in order to
better define their effect on the dimensions of consumer
behavior.
 What is the relationship among the different manifestation of
culture? Are cultural values always the origin of symbol, ritual
and heroes?
 If values indeed determine the specific form of the other three
manifestations, is there also a reciprocal effect?
 How stable are the manifestation of culture?

21.  This article provides a framework that integrates and
reinterprets current research in cross-cultural consumer
behavior. The framework is of a practical nature in that it can be
easily operationalized by managers and consumer researchers
interested in understanding how culture shapes consumer
behavior. This framework is distilled from a more general
model of the relationship between culture and consumer
behavior. Managers can use the framework as a template to
examine how consumers in foreign markets will react to their
products or services. For example, a marketer entering a
foreign country could research each of the cells in Table I to
identify potential culture-
related problems or issues.
 Academic researchers will find the framework useful because it
identifies strengths of the current body of literature and the
areas that require further attention.

22.  Additionally, this article attempts to reconcile two different
approaches in the study of culture as it affects consumer
behavior. Etic and emic philosophies are seen as two sides
of the same coin, each complementing the other. Through
the integration of previous work on cross-cultural consumer
behavior, our framework provides a global view of the
interaction of culture and consumer behavior. Consumer
researchers must now investigate the areas within the
framework for which there is a lack of rigorous study.

23. THANK YOU
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