This document provides an overview of key concepts in international business and marketing. It discusses what international business entails, including a range of cross-border activities and considerations for large and small firms operating abroad. Cultural dynamics are also examined through models of ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric, and geocentric orientations. Dimensions of culture, like masculinity versus femininity and long-term versus short-term orientation, are introduced as ways to compare cultures. The roles of symbols, heroes, rituals, values, and norms in shaping culture are outlined.

1. CHAPTER 4
Cultural Dynamics in
Assessing Global Markets

2. What is international business?
 Wide range of activities involved in conducting business
transactions across national boundaries. These are
heterogeneous, universal and sequential
 Comprehensive approach to operations of both large and small
firms engaged in business abroad.
 Concerns all activities of the firm
(selling, procurement, outsourcing…). About seizing global
opportunities (market expansion or diversification)
 Driving forces (regional economic agreements, converging
needs and wants, communication
improvements, quality, leverage…) and restraining forces
(management myopia, corporate culture, national
controls, globaphobia…)

3. EPRG Model
• Ethnocentric: everything is centered on the
domestic market.
• Polycentric: several important foreign markets
exist.
• Regiocentric: the market is composed of several
large economic regions.
• Geocentric: the world is one large global market.

4. WHAT IS MARKETING?
“Marketing is a social and managerial process
by which individuals and groups obtain what
they need and want through
creating, offering, and exchanging products of
value with others.” (Kotler)
Process, exchange, value

5.  What is international marketing?
 “International marketing is the process of planning and
conducting transactions across national borders to create
exchanges that satisfy the objectives of individuals and
organizations” (Czinkota and Ronkainen)
 “International marketing focuses its resources on global
market opportunities and threats” (Keegan and Green)
 It is a tool used to obtain improvement of the firm’s
position in the global market
Strategy and action:
global and local

6. International Marketing Decisions
Deciding whether to go abroad
Deciding which markets to enter
Deciding how to enter the market
Deciding on the marketing program
Deciding on the marketing organization

7. SIMILARITIES and DIFFERENCES between
INTERNATIONAL MARKETING and
DOMESTIC MARKETING
 SIMILARITIES: basic concepts, practices and
tools are almost identical, key success factors
are the same…
 DIFFERENCES: more strategic, more
variables, more complex, cultural
differences, legal constraints, information
sources, managing distances, entry mode
choice etc.

8. International marketing concept
Export Global
marketing marketing
Inter-
cultural, multi-
cultural
marketing

9. Culture and international marketing
• Concepts of culture
• Dimensions and models of culture
• Examples and international marketing
consequences

10. What is culture?
• “Culture is the integrated sum total of
learned behavioral traits that are shared by
members of a society” (Hoebel)
• “Culture is the entirety of societal
knowledge, norms and values” (Antonides
and Van Raaij)
Culture both affects and describes human
behavior, it is essential in international
marketing

11. Fundamentals of culture
 Culture is a total pattern of behavior that is
consistent and compatible in its components. It
is not a collection of random behaviors…
 Culture is a learned behavior. It is not
biologically transmitted. It depends on
environment, not heredity.
 Culture is behavior that is shared by a group of
people, a society. It is a distinctive way of life.

12. Culture vs. personality
• Personality is the individual’s unique
personal set of mental programs that
he/she does not share with any other
human being.
• Culture is what members of a group have
in common. “It is the glue that binds
groups together” (De Mooij)
Ideas, values, acts, emotions… are cultural
products. They help people to live together

13. Manifestations of culture
Symbols
Heroes
Rituals
Values Expressions of
and culture
Norms

14. Symbols
• Symbols are words, gestures, pictures, or objects
that carry a particular meaning recognized only by
those who share a culture.
• This is the most superficial manifestation of culture.
• New symbols are easily developed and old ones
quickly disappear.
• Symbols from one cultural group are regularly
copied by others.

15. Heroes
• Heroes are people, alive or dead, real or
imaginary, who possess characteristics
that are highly prized in a society.
• They serve as role models for behavior.
• They can become globally known, but
their stories often become local.

16. Rituals
 Rituals are the collective activities
considered socially essential within a
culture.
 They are carried out for their own sake.
 They are easily observed, but not always
understood.

17. Values
• Values are at the core of culture. Values are stable beliefs
regarding desired behavior or end states.
• They often have a religious, ideological or humanistic
background.
• Goals are derived from values.
• Values are among the first things children learn, not
consciously but implicitly.
• Core values are resistant to globalization; they vary across
cultures and are not likely to change frequently.

18. Norms
• Norms and values are part of the “non-material”
culture.
• Norms are beliefs regarding how to behave and
how not to behave (do’s and don’ts).
• People differ in the extent to which they accept
and comply with norms.
• They create expectations and criteria regarding
the conduct of others.

19. Explicit vs. implicit culture
• Explicit culture:
languages, behavior, know-
how, institutions (directly observable)
• Implicit culture: moral values, learning
process, beliefs and representations
(subconscious)

20. Two levels of cultural diversity in Intl business
 External cultural diversity
 Cultural determinants influencing purchasing and
consumption behaviors (Who buys? What? Where? How? Why?)
 Cultural determinants influencing negotiations
(relationships with suppliers, buyers, partners)
 Internal cultural diversity
 Observed within all MNCs (identity and
corporate culture)
 Cultural differences that affect the way
subsidiaries work together

21. Four levels of culture in marketing
DOMINANT CULTURE
Non-material Material culture of Non-material
consumer products culture of the firm
culture
(market) (corporate culture)

22. Transfer of culture
Two main cultural transfer processes:
• Socialization: transfer of culture to new
generations; older generation to younger
generation; education.
• Acculturation: transfer of culture to adults who
have grown up in different cultures, who have
been socialized in different cultures; ethnic
minorities; multicultural societies.

23. 4 Processes of cultural change
 Cohort (Group) effects,
 Age effects,
 Democratization and
 Exclusivation

24. Cohort effects
(Group / Followers)
 Acceptance of new values and behaviors begins at a
young age.
 These values and behaviors are retained over the
years.
 They are spread in society because young people
grow older and the “old” values gradually disappear
with the extinction of the older cohorts.
 Implies a slow cultural change

25. Age effect
 Certain values or behaviors are associated
with a particular age group.
 Behaviors are modified as age groups
change.
 Age-bound consumer behavior.
 Possible reverse socialization.

26. Democratization
• Cultural “leveling” or “spreading”
• Cultural differences across social classes
decrease.
• Results from an increasing level of general
welfare, the influence of mass media and the
stress on the equality ideal.
• Mechanisms of democratization: trickle-
down, trickle-up, trickle-across.

27. Exclusivation
 Reverse of democratization
 Occurs less frequently
 Implies limited social spreading of values, goods
and behavior.
 Cultural change is limited to a certain group
(“elite”, “leading edge”).

28. Dimensions of culture
• What makes one culture different from another
culture?
• How can we compare cultures or cluster cultures
according to behavioral characteristics?
• Stereotypes vs. cultural dimensions
• Different cultures have different stereotypes of other
cultures.

29. CULTURE BY GENDER
• Masculine vs. Feminine
• “the dominant values in a masculine society are achievement
and success; the dominant values in a feminine society are
caring for others and quality of life”
• Focuses on the degree the society reinforces, or does not
reinforce, the traditional masculine work role model of male
achievement, performance, control and power

30. CULTURE BY GENDER
• Shows the importance of status in societies
• Indicates the degree of gender differentiation
and the importance of masculine values
(assertiveness, money, material
goods, success…)

31. Long-term orientation (LTO)
• Long-term vs. Short-term orientation
• “the extent to which a society exhibits a pragmatic future-
oriented perspective rather than a conventional historic or
short-term point of view”
• High LTO = perseverance, ordering relationships by
status, thrift, sense of shame, family ties, long-term
thinking, paternalism

32. Long-term orientation (LTO)
• Focuses on the degree the society
embraces, or does not embrace, long-term
devotion to traditional, forward thinking
values
• Indicates whether the country prescribes to
the values of long-term commitments and
respect for tradition