Globalization has brought dramatic changes to the marketplace. A proliferation of global brands brings diverse cultures to a consumer population that is also growing culturally diverse. This course enables students to understand how globalization changes consumers at a psychological level, and provides tools for imbuing brands with cultural meanings—creating iconic brands—that can resonate with global consumers. The focus is on understanding that culture exists in the mind (e.g., values and beliefs) as well as in the environment (e.g., objects, brands, and institutions), and that globalization creates multi-cultural spaces in contemporary societies. Consumers can use the cultural meaning of a brand to build their identities (i.e., assimilate the brand cultural symbolism) or reject the brand’s cultural meaning(s) (i.e., exclusionary reactions). The course will help students identify when assimilation vs. exclusionary reactions are more likely to occur, as well as devise strategies for imbuing brands with cultural meanings that can elevate them to the status of cultural icons. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to: • Understand how globalization impacts the psychological responses of consumers in global markets • Understand what culture is and how it manifests itself • Understand how brands acquire cultural meanings • Predict consumers’ responses to the cultural meanings in brands • Identify strategies to win-over multi-cultural consumers in globalized markets • Learn how to build an iconic brand This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price. For more information, please see the Resource page in this course and onlinemba.illinois.edu.
Lesson 4-4 Marketing Programs to Build Cultural Equity
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Do curso por University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Global Impact: Cultural Psychology
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Curso 5 de 7 em Specialization Global Challenges in Business
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Focusing on Culture to Build Iconic Brands
This module discusses the marketing process to build cultural equity into a brand, or to turn a brand into a cultural icon. The process consists of three stages. The first stage is acquiring a deep cultural understanding of the brand and its market, which is referred to as conducting a cultural audit. The second stage is to develop a cultural positioning, or to articulate a statement about how the brand distinctively embodies the culture. Finally, the last stage is the identification of marketing programs (promotion, product, distribution, and price) to communicate the cultural positioning.
Conheça os instrutores
Carlos J. TorelliProfessor
Department of Business Administration
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Once a cultural position has been articulated, the final step for
building cultural equity is to identify and implement marketing actions and
at communicate in the position.
These actions include making choices about the brand visual identity, product
decisions, communication strategies and pricing and channel strategies.
Let us discuss each of these actions in more detail.
Let's talk about choosing a culturally relevant visual identity.
Market is going to use the cultural meanings evoke by the sound in a certain
names to increase their associations with the evoked cultures and
in turn to increase their cultural equity.
For instance, with this Danish sounding name, Häagen-Dazs,
the premium brand of ice cream might only reinforce its hedonic image.
Thanks to the lane between Danish culture and hedonic food consumption, but
also increase its symbolism of European culture.
For its American owner general meals, this might offer an opportunity for leverage in
cultural equity in a way that an American sounding name might not accomplish.
This might be useful in some Middle Eastern markets in which European culture
is appreciated better than American culture.
Colors used in logos and packaging can also support our cultural positioning
by creating cultural association.
For instance, iconic American brands like Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Ford,
all have in common the use of red, white and blue in their logos and packaging.
These are the same colors of the American flag.
And hence, colors that have cultural significance for Americans.
Similarly, Mavesa, Pan and Savoy, iconic Venezuelan brands have in
common the use of yellow, blue and red in their logos and in their packaging.
Again, these are the colors of the Venezuelan flag.
And hence, colors that have cultural significance for Venezuelans.
Brands also can consistently adopt characters and
icons to support a cultural position.
For instance, Budweiser, the iconic American beer is
strongly associated with Clydesdale horses used for promotions and commercials.
There are several teams of horses that travel around the United States and
others that remain in their official homes at the company headquarters, and
Anheuser-Busch Brewery complex in St. Louis, Missouri.
Television advertising featuring the Budweiser Clydesdales had been a long
standing Super Bowl tradition from their first appearance in 1933 to their
enduring presence on the American landscape.
The Clydesdales are more than they symbol of Budweiser beer.
They are the living embodiment of America's industrial spirit.
Brands also carefully choose products to build cultural equity.
One key aspect in the foreign expansion is to offer a product that caters to
the taste and expectations of target consumers in the new market.
In the same way that brands required cultural meanings,
products can also gain cultural symbolism.
We talk about this in some earlier videos.
Certain cultural traditions involve the use of products that get imbued with
the values of the culture.
For instance, in America, to express that something embodies the qualities that
are thought to be typical of American culture,
people often use the expression is as American as apple pie.
That's because an apple pie is an American icon in the same way that arepas,
the corn dog made into a flat round patty that is baked or grilled are a Venezuelan
icon or basmati rice is an Indian icon and perfumes are a French icon.
For historic and cultural reasons certain parts become associated with the values,
beliefs and ideas of a culture.
That require cultural meanings can raise the level of a cultural symbol and
were referred to such products that's cultural or symbolic, or iconic products.
Because iconic products are loaded with cultural meanings, brands can build
their cultural equity by establishing connections with such iconic products.
Indeed, brands of iconic products are often times iconic brands themselves.
For instance, arepas are a cultural icons for Venezuelans and Harina Pan,
the market leader in the category is one of the most iconic Venezuelan brands.
Similarly, jeans are considered to be an American icon and
Levis enjoy a relatively high level of iconicity for Americans.
So, one approach for a brand to increase its cultural equity in a foreign market is
to associate itself with products that symbolize the culture of target consumers.
Successful global companies pay careful attention to this product
strategy in order to boost their cultural relevance.
For instance, McDonald's carefully analyzes the taste and
traditions in the different foreign markets in which the company operates and
introduces products, specifically design to embody the cultural traditions of
foreign consumers, such as rice burgers in Hong Kong or the Maharaja Mac in India.
Products with cultural significance can also help a brand to heighten or
reinforce its equity in existing markets.
For instance, in its quest to become an American icon, one of the first product
extensions undertaken by Under Armor, the American apparel brand was athletic shoes.
This was a smart move given the cultural significant of athletic shoes for
Americans.
Our product is strongly connected to a lifetime of fitness, style and comfort.
Similarly, when Budweiser, the American iconic beer introduced barbecue sauce was
reinforcing the collection with American tradition of grilling and drinking beer.
Brands can also used cultural symbols and ideals in their communication.
Communicating culturally relevant images to build cultural equity focuses on
informing consumers about the imagery associations and
the cultural insights that support the brand's distinctive cultural meanings.
Certain images are more culturally relevant than others are as we discussed
earlier.
A brand attempting to increase his cultural equity should promote images that
are culturally relevant for its target market.
For instance,
marketers can build cultural equity among vertical individualistic consumer segments
by communicating self-enhancement brand name by use of power.
Social status, prestige, controller dominance over people of resources and
achievement.
Personal success for demonstrating competence.
This is something that Toyota has try to do to established a cultural connection
with American consumers in the big cup trump market in
which vertical individual is as likely to be a salient cultural orientation.
In one commercial, the Toyota Tundra is pulling the space shuttle.
An American symbol of ingenuity and technological superiority.
This commercial not only appropriates these meanings and
transferred them to the brain, but also communicates the grand schema and
ruggedness that characterizes American culture.
In other commercials for the Tundra,
Toyota has made connections to American football, the iconic American sport and
highlighted values of achievement and competition which are cherished values for
the vertical individualist American culture.
Building cultural equity can also be done by gaining cultural insightfulness
in communications.
Brands can use their communication strategy to demonstrate their cultural
insightfulness.
This can be a powerful way of building cultural equity.
For instance, in the 1970s, the Volkswagen Beetle was one of the most iconic
brands in the United States, controlling about 5% of the auto market.
The company reached this status by engaging American culture
in a very unique way.
Volkswagen capitalized on the anticonformism brewing among young
Americans at the time who thought that the good life built around over consumption
promoted in mainstream media was overly scripted and conformist.
The brand offered consumers a car that would let them escape the pressure to
adhere to suburban standards and
would allow them instead to create their own stories.
This cultural insight is cleverly captured in a Volkswagen
ad from the 1970s with the tag line, we do our thing, you do yours.
Depicted two side by side Beetles.
One with a traditional black look and
another colorfully decorated in an artistic pattern.
The ad further states that Volkswagen's thing is to steer clear of the idiocy
of annual model changes and to focus instead on perfecting its Beetle.
Meanwhile, consumer's thing is to treat their Beetle like something else.
To scrub them, stripe them and flower them in very far out ways or
to treat it as a new member of the family that happens to live in the garage.
Volkswagen was in fact, empowering consumers to create their own stories with
their cars rather than relying on mass marketers to do so.
How a company decides to price and distribute its products and
services can also help support the cultural positioning of the brand.
For example, Polar, an iconic Venezuelian beer leverage it channel
strategy in its quest to become a cultural icon for Venezuelans.
The firm did so by establishing a complex distribution network of independent
truck owners, franchisees for
delivering beer in the shanty towns of Caracas and other big cities.
Areas that traditional distribution channels can hardly reach.
Because a sizable segment of the population
lives in such an accessible area, it is important for
Polar to establish a closer connection with consumers in these areas in order
to support its cultural meaning for all Venezuelans.
A pricing strategy can also be used to reinforce a brand's cultural positioning.
The price that a product commands can serve as a signal to its intrinsic value
to consumers.
Often, pricing decisions are inherent in a brand positioning statement.
In these instances, companies need to ensure
that pricing decisions are aligned with the brand positioning.
For instance, Target, the American retailer.
As a position, it is a mass merchandiser of a stylish but affordable goods.
Implying that products sold at Target stores should be priced slightly higher
than those sold at Walmart stores that adopts an everyday low price strategy, but
lower than those in more upper scale department stores such as Macy's.
Implementation of social price and
strategy helping an image that appeals to consumers who are young,
educated, down to Earth, mainly women who value stylish merchandise.
I want to do an exercise to illustrate how to develop a communication strategy to
build cultural equity.
I want you to watch these three NASCAR commercials.
And as you watch the commercials, I want you to think first,
what are the themes in the different commercials?
How are these themes aligned with the values and
ideas nurtured in American culture?
Are there specific American symbols and
objects that are used to imbue NASCAR with cultural meanings?
Now, I'll let you watch the NASCAR commercials.
In all of the commercials, the central theme is competition and winning.
This makes sense, given that NASCAR is all about racing.
But also remember that NASCAR stands for the National Association for
Stock Car Auto Racing.
However, these commercials also emphasized the emotional and personal aspects
of competing and winning in different familiar contexts between siblings,
between coworkers and even between romantic partners.
They also highlight the feelings of accomplishment, pride and
superiority as well as the social recognition enjoyed by winners.
These are all themes that align perfectly with self-enhancement values of personal
success and achievement nurtured in the vertical individualistic American culture.
One of the commercials further incorporates specific American symbols and
objects, such as the American flag, riding a bull or an electric guitar.
The use of these symbols further strengthens the Americanness of NASCAR.
So, what do we learn in this video?
First, building cultural equity implies aligning all the marketing actions
to communicate the brand's cultural position.
Examples of this action are choosing a culturally relevant visual identity.
Making product decisions that reinforce the cultural significance of the brand.
Adopting a communication strategy that connects with culturally relevant symbols,
values and ideals.
And finally, implementing channel and
price strategies that reinforce cultural equity.
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