Cross-Cultural Analysis - Are Traditional Techniques Still Relevant?

This article discusses the relevance of traditional cross-cultural analysis techniques such as Hofstede, Hall and Hall, and Trompenaars in the 21st century. It explores the impact of culture on business and management and provides insights for organizations expanding globally.

Marketing Across
Cultures CW1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Topic : “Cross-Cultural Analysis – are traditional techniques such as Hofstede, Wills et al, Hall
and Hall, Trompenaars still relevant in the 21st Century?” ............................................................3
TASK 1 Critical Evaluation........................................................................................................3
TASK 2 Comparison..................................................................................................................5
TASK 3 Relevance and Conclusion...........................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Cross culture is a concept that helps the business to recognise the differences among
various people working in the organisation. This can be on grounds of different nations, ethnicity
and backgrounds. Due to globalisation it has become important for the businesses to understand
the concept of cross culture. To overcome the impact of this the organisations need to provide
trainings to the employees which will help them to expand in any new territory. This project is
focussing upon the literature review that will provide knowledge of various techniques which
supports cross cultural analysis.
Topic : “Cross-Cultural Analysis – are traditional techniques such as Hofstede, Wills et al,
Hall and Hall, Trompenaars still relevant in the 21st Century?”
TASK 1 Critical Evaluation
Cross-cultural analysis need to be conducted by the businesses who wants to expand their
business in new economy where the culture is different than in what their have their existing
operations. To understand this concept in detail the organisation needs to consider various
models that will help them in enter into new marketplace. People who have expertise in the topic
has developed various literature on the models and theories on cross-cultural analysis. Out of
these literature, concepts and theories some of them can be used by the businesses in expanding
their operations globally. They provides the fundamental knowledge which helps them to gain
the comprehensive understanding of the culture in context of business and their management.
Some of these models and approaches are given below along with their perspective :
Hofstede Cultural Model : Hofstede's cultural dimension theory is a framework that
helps to understand the cross culture communication which was developed by Greet Hofstede.
This model helps to describe the effects of the culture of the society on the members of the
organisation. The theory has six dimensions which helps the businesses to understand various
factors such as cross culture psychology, communication and international management. The
dimensions that helps in understanding the national culture are individualism-collectivism which
states that collectivism side of the people helps them to share their views and values in the
groups while the individualism side is that where people have their vision as per their education
and job in which they are engaged in (Maignan, 2001). The marketing impact of this dimension
on businesses is of the quality and the value of the employees. The other dimension is

uncertainty avoidance index which suggest that the people in this index are more conscious and
tensed about their future due to which are likely to adopt new brands easily. Power distance
index defines the extend to which the less powerful people in the organisation accepts the
inequality. The higher the score higher will be the pessimist culture but in this the males need to
targeted while marketing the products. The masculinity-femininity index helps to identify
whether the society is male centric or female centric on the basis of which the marketing
campaigns are designed by the organisation. The long-term orientation index dimension helps to
understand whether the society is future focused or not and if the score is higher then society is
considered future oriented. So the marketing for them should be specific such as on the basis of
events (Feskens and Hox, 2018). On the basis of the dimensions the influence of culture on the
communication in global context can be identified.
Hall and Hall Cultural Dimensions : The model was given by Edward Twitchell Hall
when he observed that various issues has been arising before the organisations due to ineffective
intercultural communication. In this model they believed that such miscommunication arises
because of diversity among the people. It has three dimensions which are based upon space, time
and context. The first dimension is high and low context in which the low context groups are
those who are straightforward then high context people as they convey their messages with any
indirect medium. This has implication on the culture as the communications of high context
culture groups can create confusion which make them to deal in short while the low context
people directly communicated which is why they like to be detail oriented (De Mooij, 2015). The
next dimension of the theory is monochronic and polychronic time where monochronic people
intends to perform only one task at a time by carefully analysing and considering all the factors
while polychronic people focusses on various material thins at a time. This will haver impact on
the culture as the people of monochronic context will try to get things done in their own way
whereas people from polychronic context can adjust things. The last dimension of the model is
high and low territoriality where the cultural group of high territoriality are more concerned
about the ownership which is why they are more often found out into fights, rebates etc. whereas
the cultural groups from low territoriality are concerned for sharing the space rather than
focussing on the ownership. This model helps the businesses to understand the impact of the
culture (Ordóñez, Beckley, Duinker and Sinclair, 2017).

Trompenaars cross-cultural analysis : When companies operates in different nations
they have to face cultural diversity for which they uses 7 elements of this model that develops a
basic perception to conduct marketing. Such elements are Specific versus Diffuse, Universalism
versus Particularism, Neutral versus Emotional, Individualism versus Communitarianism,
Achievement versus Ascription, Sequential versus Synchronous time and Internal direction
versus External direction. This model helps in gaining the knowledge of the differences in
culture between the country of the parent company and the other country in which are planning
to expand (Davidov, Schmidt and Meuleman, 2018).
TASK 2 Comparison
All the model focusses on different aspects such as Hofsted's cross-cultural model
primarily focuses upon the diversity among the people on the basis of the behaviour of the
members and the ethnic group. This model can be used by the marketer to formulate strategy
when they want to enter into new foreign market which is why they are mostly used by the
multinational companies as they move to different companies. This model is suitable when the
organisation launches new product in new country as they have to formulate various marketing
strategy for the product, which will be different then that of the existing one. While Hall and
Hall's cultural factors helps an organisation to understand the impact of cross-cultural factors on
the communication because the culture varies from place to place. This will help the business to
understand the influence of culture and to deal with the organisational behaviour. Whereas the
last model Trompenaars focuses upon basic factors which are to be considered while marketing.
This model can easily be applied to the general business and management of the business. All
these model can be used by the organisations as per the issues faced by them while expand to any
other foreign country. The models also have some similarities as they all focuses upon various
activities of varied cultural groups present in the country (Van de Vijver, Van Hemert, and
Poortinga, 2015). All the above mentioned model somehow focuses upon various factors
associated with the cultural differences such as communication, behavioural differences. This
helps the organisation in developing a relative understanding of demographics and behavioural
patterns of the target market.
TASK 3 Relevance and Conclusion
To achieve the objective of the organisation they have to expand their operation for
which cross cultural analysis becomes important for them. The major issue which they faced

while expanding the business into new boundaries are related to various aspects of the culture of
the country (Ang and Van Dyne, 2015). On such basis they have to formulate various entry and
marketing strategy. Inspite of the globalisation the businesses get affected by the prevailing
culture of the country because of changes in various uncontrollable factors. Such factors also
affects the ways the organisation makes profits, customers relations , their strategic course of
actions, management practices, communication strategies etc. Organisational behaviour is a
crucial aspect with which the organisation has to meet with. Various models such as Hall and
Hall, Hofstede and Trompenaars plays a significant roles in understanding such culture as they
provides an overview of various aspects of the culture such as their decision making, behavioural
pattern etc. These models are traditional models but the organisation can apply more recent
techniques and theories to understand the changes diversity. But CCA technique still be used by
the companies as they solve the purposes of the organisation to develop and devise various
strategies related to marketing. From this report it is identified that to succeed in the competitive
national and international environment the managers have to develop a sound understanding of
the cross-cultures. Inability in understand such diversity can lead to failure of the particular
business proposal as the intension which with the products and services they offers will not be
communicated effectively to the target segment.

REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Ang, S. and Van Dyne, L., 2015. Handbook of cultural intelligence. Routledge.
Davidov, E., Schmidt, P., Billiet, J. and Meuleman, B., 2018. Cross-cultural analysis: Methods
and applications. Routledge.
De Mooij, M., 2015. Cross-cultural research in international marketing: clearing up some of the
confusion. International Marketing Review, 32(6), pp.646-662.
Feskens, R. and Hox, J.J., 2018. Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling for Cross-Cultural
Research. Cross-Cultural Analysis: Methods and Applications, p.347.
Maignan, I., 2001. Consumers' perceptions of corporate social responsibilities: A cross-cultural
comparison. Journal of business ethics, 30(1), pp.57-72.
Ordóñez, C., Beckley, T., Duinker, P.N. and Sinclair, A.J., 2017. Public values associated with
urban forests: Synthesis of findings and lessons learned from emerging methods and
cross-cultural case studies. Urban forestry & urban greening, 25, pp.74-84.
Van de Vijver, F.J., Van Hemert, D.A. and Poortinga, Y.H., 2015. Multilevel analysis of
individuals and cultures. Psychology Press.