MKT3006 Global Advertising and Brand Promotion (L3) - Values and Culture

What are the three meanings of “value” in marketing?

Financial value: What a brand, asset or business is worth. Consumer value: The benefits a buyer receives relative to the costs. Personal values: Enduring beliefs about what is preferable, important or worth pursuing.

How does Rokeach (1973) define a value?

A value is an enduring belief that one mode of conduct or end-state of existence is preferable to an opposing mode of conduct or end-state of existence.

What three roles do values play in guiding people's choices?

Values act as priorities, helping people decide what matters most; compasses, guiding decisions; and filters, influencing how people interpret situations and alternatives.

What is a value system, and what is value priority?

A value system is a learned organisation of principles and rules that helps people choose between alternatives, resolve conflicts and make decisions. Value priority refers to the order of importance assigned to different values within that system.

How can value priorities differ between societies?

Societies may assign different levels of importance to the same values. For example, the lecture contrasts the high priority given to individual happiness in the United States with its lower priority in East Asian societies.

How can people share the same value but express it differently?

People may share a value but express it through different behaviours, routines and product choices. For example, cleanliness can be expressed through different laundry habits, cleaning frequencies, products and definitions of what counts as clean.

Why are values considered enduring, and how are they learned?

Values tend to remain stable over time and are learned early in life, often implicitly rather than consciously. According to the lecture, basic value systems are largely in place by around age 10. They can operate unconsciously, like an “automatic pilot.”

Why does a change in behaviour not necessarily mean that underlying cultural values have changed?

People may express their values differently depending on the context. For example, an Indian man may wear Western clothes and disregard inter-caste rules at work while dressing traditionally and observing those codes at home.

Values, Norms and Behaviour

What is the difference between values and norms, and between micro-level and macro-level values?

Values concern what individuals consider important or preferable. Norms concern what people generally do or believe they should do. Micro-level values are individual values, while macro-level values are collective or cultural values.

What is the difference between descriptive and injunctive social norms?

Descriptive norms concern what people generally do. Injunctive norms concern what people believe is socially approved or disapproved of, or what people should or should not do.

How does littering illustrate the difference between social norms and personal values?

People may litter more in dirty environments because littering appears commonplace, not because they believe it is right. This demonstrates that what people commonly do does not necessarily correspond to what they believe people should do.

What is the difference between the desired and the desirable?

The desired refers to what people want for themselves, including their personal preferences and choices. The desirable refers to what society considers good, right or socially approved.

How can the desired and the desirable be reflected in advertising?

The advertising argument may appeal to the desired, or what an individual personally wants, while the surrounding environment may reflect the desirable, or what society considers normal and appropriate.

What is the value–action gap?

The value–action gap is the difference between what people say they intend to do or are willing to do and what they actually do. For example, consumers may express willingness to buy environmentally friendly products without purchasing them.

What does the Eurobarometer comparison reveal about environmentally friendly purchasing?

The gap between intentions and actual buying varies across countries and time. For example, Sweden's reported environmentally friendly purchasing increased from 42% in 2008 to 60% in 2014, whereas Greece's increased from 13% to 17%.

What is the Theory of Planned Behaviour, and what three factors influence behavioural intention?

Ajzen's theory identifies three factors: attitude, meaning a person's evaluation of the behaviour; subjective norm, meaning perceived social pressure; and perceived behavioural control, meaning how easy or difficult the behaviour is believed to be.

Why is a favourable attitude alone insufficient to explain behaviour?

A person may have a positive attitude towards an action but still not perform it. Their perceived social pressure and their perceived ability to carry out the behaviour also influence their intentions and actions.

Culture and Traits

Can the same advertising idea mean the same thing everywhere? Why or why not?

Not necessarily. Values and culture influence what people notice, prefer, understand and sometimes reject. The same advertising message can therefore be interpreted differently across cultural contexts.

How does Ferraro (2005) define culture, and what does culture have in common across its members?

Culture is “everything that people have, think, and do as members of a society.” It involves shared beliefs, values, meanings and learned behaviours. These shared patterns help bind groups together.

What is the difference between culture and traits?

Culture refers to shared patterns, meanings and values at the group level. Traits are relatively stable characteristics of individuals. Culture can explain group tendencies, but it cannot predict every individual's behaviour.

What is the difference between a state and a trait?

A state is temporary and depends on a particular situation or moment. A trait is a relatively stable characteristic that persists more consistently across situations and over time. For example, state anxiety is how anxious someone feels now, whereas trait anxiety is their general tendency to feel anxious.

At what different levels can culture exist?

Culture can exist at the level of the world or humanity, continents, nations, regions or provinces, tribes or groups, families and individuals. What is true at one cultural level does not necessarily apply at another.

Manifestations of Culture

What is Hofstede's “layers of an onion” model of culture?

The model presents four layers: symbols, heroes, rituals and values. Symbols, heroes and rituals are visible expressions of culture, while values form the deepest layer and help explain the meanings behind those expressions.

What are cultural symbols, heroes, rituals and values?

Symbols are words, gestures, pictures or objects carrying culturally recognised meanings. Heroes are real or imaginary people with characteristics highly prized by a society. Rituals are collective activities considered socially essential. Values are the deepest manifestation of culture.

What does the Barilla advertisement example demonstrate about culture?

American and Italian viewers remembered different symbols from the same advertisement. This demonstrates that culture influences what audiences notice, interpret and remember.

What is the difference between an icon, an index and a symbol?

An icon resembles the object it represents. An index has a direct connection to what it represents. A symbol receives its meaning through convention or shared understanding. Gestures and body language can also function as culturally learned signs.

Why must imagery be interpreted or adapted across cultures?

Cultures differ in pictorial conventions, visual perception, viewing direction and preferences for visual versus verbal information. Pictures may therefore need to be translated into the pictorial language of another culture instead of being assumed to communicate the same meaning everywhere.

Why is music culturally significant in advertising?

Music is connected to people's lives and cultural identities. Songs can express a shared identity and rhythmic consensus within a culture, so their meanings may require cultural interpretation when used internationally.

Thinking Patterns and Language

What is the difference between analytic and holistic thinking?

Analytic thinking focuses on objects, categories and attributes. Holistic thinking focuses on relationships, context and the overall situation. These differences can affect how people interpret advertising messages.

How does the lecture contrast North American and Japanese approaches to thinking?

The North American approach is described as structural, analytical and focused on decision-making through distinctions and extremes. The Japanese approach is described as more experience-based and holistic, recognising the overall situation before examining individual details.

How can cultural differences affect the way advertising arguments are supported?

Across cultures, arguments may rely to different degrees on facts, ideology or dogma, tradition, or emotion. These differences affect how audiences interpret messages and the relationships between information.

What is the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis?

The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis proposes that the structure of language influences perception and categorisation. People speaking markedly different languages may therefore observe and evaluate similar things differently.

How can language influence brand memory and brand-name adaptation?

The lecture explains that English speakers rely more on phonological representations, whereas Chinese speakers rely more on visual representations. These differences can affect how brand names are encoded and recalled. Brand names may therefore be adapted phonetically or semantically according to consumers' language and preferences.

What is the difference between the etic and emic approaches to comparing cultures?

Etic focuses on comparable aspects across cultures to explain differences in behaviour, norms and attitudes. Emic focuses on meanings and values specific to a particular culture, recognising that apparently similar concepts may carry different meanings in different contexts.

How do happiness and ethnocentrism illustrate the importance of understanding cultural context?

The lecture contrasts the importance of happiness as an American value with the priority given to fulfilling obligations in Japan. Ethnocentrism occurs when people use their own cultural perspective to interpret or classify other cultures, potentially leading to misunderstandings about what others value.

What is the difference between independent and interdependent self-construal?

Independent self-construal views the self as relatively autonomous, emphasising personal goals and internal attributes. Interdependent self-construal understands the self in relation to others, emphasising social roles, relationships and context.

What is the difference between acculturation and enculturation?

Acculturation refers to changes that occur through contact with another culture. Enculturation is the process of learning and internalising the culture in which a person grows up.

Stereotypes in Advertising

What is a stereotype, and how is it acquired?

Stereotyping means mentally placing people into categories. Stereotypes are socially acquired, can vary across social and cultural groups, and help people simplify social situations, although they can also lead to incorrect judgements.

What is the difference between functional and dysfunctional stereotyping?

Functional stereotyping can help people form expectations and understand social situations quickly. Dysfunctional stereotyping occurs when an individual is judged incorrectly based only on their membership of a particular group.

Why are stereotypes useful but potentially risky in international advertising?

Advertising often uses recognisable cultural cues because messages must be understood quickly. However, those cues may not have the same meaning everywhere, and strong national stereotypes can lead to misunderstandings or inaccurate assumptions about individuals.

What is the main challenge for advertisers when using cultural patterns and stereotypes?

Advertisers must simplify messages enough for audiences to understand them quickly without assuming that cultural cues mean the same thing everywhere. They need to recognise cultural patterns without treating every member of a group as identical.