622 The Marketing Book
10 Precedents– learned from market scanning.
Through environmental scanning at home and
abroad, it is possible to discover strategies
that may be borrowed from other companies
in other industries or in other countries and
applied to your own situation.
Effects of culture
Culture is a composite of many interrelated
components – as we shall see shortly –
although it is generally accepted that language
is the embodiment of a culture. Certain of these
other components have been investigated by
Manraiet al. (2001), who studied style (meaning
fashion consciousness and dress conformity)
across three East European emerging markets,
and these findings indicate chiefly demo-
graphic age, income and gender differences.
However, let us focus for the moment on
language. Language is important to conduct
business successfully and here there is a net
advantage for the English-speaking countries.
Overall, English (with 427 million speakers) is
second to Mandarin Chinese (726 million
speakers) in terms of the number of people who
speak the language. However, in many coun-
tries, English is a second language and the first
or second language for business. Foreign
investors such as the Japanese and South
Koreans have established themselves in Britain
because they feel comfortable with the lan-
guage. A further advantage is that foreign
students wishing to learn English bring £500
million each year into the British economy. In
countries and within multinational corpora-
tions, the business language is often just Eng-
lish, and not just internally; English language
will be prominent on all products and commu-
nications as well. This has an important value
that must not be overlooked. Taking this
further, the possible expansion of the European
Union, whether or not it reaches 27 or 28
member states or even more, augurs well for
the increased usage of the English language.
Telecommunications have developed in Eng-
lish-speaking countries. This was the case with
the telegraph, radio, telephone and now Inter-
net. Countries such as France – and the prov-
ince of Quebec in Canada – have actively
resisted this English invasion and sought to
place curbs on the use of certain words so as to
outlaw ‘franglais’, but now even in Russia, the
same cry is being heard of the widespread use
of the English language on billboards and in
general advertising. There will always be resist-
ance to what is seen as foreign encroachment
upon the national identity, but an inability to
speak English today means an inability to be
heard. English will continue to be prominent as
it is being learned by the wealthy and well
educated in all parts of the world. The question
also must arise as to whether, with different
levels of fluency and regional variations, not
just in dialect but word usage and meaning,
people actually mean what they say?International marketing and the
interface with local culture
To understand culture, we have to realize that it
is behavioural attitudes, which we as members
of a society learn and pass on to others.
Whereas exporting is about sending products
and services blindly into foreign markets for
others to distribute, promote and sell to final
customers, the intelligent international mar-
keter recognizes the importance of maintaining
control over branded products at the point of
sale. Culture for the international marketer is
seen to operate at three levels:1 Habits and conventions. Where we may be able
to most effectively change behaviour by
influencing potential users, possibly by
demonstration of a better, more modern,
more intelligent way of doing a certain
frequently repeated daily task or chore. With
habits which rely on automatic responses, if
we are able to demonstrate a better way of
doing something and that product concept
does not ask us to challenge our own value
system, then we can usually rely on that idea
being successfully adopted. For example,