The Significance of Culture in International Marketing Strategies

This report delves into the critical importance of culture in international marketing, highlighting how cultural factors significantly influence marketing strategies. It emphasizes that establishing and maintaining a strong organizational culture is essential for gaining a competitive advantage. The report references Hofstede's definition of culture as shared values and norms, including traditions, religions, customs, and beliefs. It then explores the impact of national culture, using examples such as the cultural differences between Saudi Arabia and the United States. The report then discusses the significance of language, and its impact on marketing efforts. The report uses examples to demonstrate how language differences can pose challenges for marketing managers in framing IMC campaigns, product names, taglines, and product labels. Furthermore, the report provides a review of the literature regarding culture and its importance with the help of different examples. From the analysis, it has been identified that language attribute of culture is one of the most complex aspects while creating and designing the product label because every nation is comprised of a number of languages as their official language. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for marketing managers to understand and navigate these cultural nuances to ensure effective global marketing strategies.

Running head: INTERNATIONAL MARKETING
International Marketing
February 6
2019

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Importance of Culture in International Marketing
In today's global market, it is very essential to discuss the significance of culture in
international marketing. The paper discusses the importance of culture in international
marketing. In order to attain a competitive advantage, it is significant to create and maintain a
culture in a business organization.
According to Hofsted, Culture is considered as the shared values and norms of business. It
imitates traditions, religions, customs, and beliefs of any group. The culture of a nation is
known as the national culture, which imitates the general religious beliefs, traditions, and
customs of a business. For instance, Saudi Arabia is known as an Islamic nation and the
culture of the country imitates the beliefs and values of Islam. Muslim pray five times a day,
whereas American culture that is a western culture reflects the determination of personal
achievement (Karem, 2015, 338). The cultural framework is comprised of eight attributes that
assist a marketing manager to known about the international market culture.
Language
According to Ahmed, Ullah, and Alam (2014), Language is the system that is comprised of
acquisition, development, maintenance, and utilization of multifaceted systems of
communication, mainly the human aptitude to do so; and a language is considered as one of
the definite instances of such a system.
The importance of language differences could not be exaggerated, and across the world, there
are around three thousand languages. Language differences could become a challenge for the
marketing managers in framing IMC campaigns, product names, taglines, product labels,
brand, etc. (Yağız, Aydın and Akdemir, 2016, 119). Searching for a one brand name that is
accepted and operated worldwide in terms of meaning, ownability, and pronunciation is a

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huge challenge. Of course, proper and grammatical use of language in marketing
communication is significant for a brand, company, or product to be regarded as trustworthy,
credible, and of high quality. Language becomes very complex in a nation where there is
more than one official language. For example, in Canada, according to the national law
product labels must include both French and English. In China and India, around two hundred
diverse languages are spoken. In India, there are twenty formally documented languages.
Besides this, the official language of China is Standard Chinese, and numerous independent
districts have chosen other added official languages. For now, in Macau and Hong Kong,
Portuguese, English, and Cantonese Chinese are regarded as their official languages (Ahmed,
Ullah, and Alam, 2014, 3805). Clearly, language can be complex issues for the marketing
managers very soon.
Lastly, marketing manages must be familiar to what they converse when they select which
languages to be used or not. For instance, in Eastern Europe, the Soviet occupation long
history at the time of the Cold War has left with numerous populaces with an adverse acuity
of the Russian language. Products that are manufactured with Russian labeling can suffer
accordingly (Martinez and Castillo, 2015, 35).
The above paper is reflecting the importance of culture for international marketing and the
complexity experienced by the marketing managers in labeling their products or brands. The
paper has presented a review of the literature regarding culture and its importance with the
help of different examples. From the above analysis, it has been identified that language
attribute of culture is one of the most complex aspects while creating and designing the
product label because every nation is comprised of a number of languages as their official
language.

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References
Ahmed, Manzoor, Ullah, Shafi, and Alam, Aftab. 2014. “Importance of Culture in Success of
International Marketing.” European Academic Research, 1, no.10 (January): 3802-3814.
Karem, Rashed Al. 2015. “The Cultural Impact on International Marketing Strategy, With a
Special Emphasis of Bangladesh Perspective.” International Journal of Business and
Technopreneurship, 5, no.2 (June): 337-204.
Martinez, Jesus, and Castillo, Jesus. 2015. “The Speech Act as an Act of Knowing.”
International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 3, no.6 (February): 31-38.
Yağız, Oktay, Aydın, Burcu, and Akdemir Ahmet. 2016. “ELT research in Turkey: A content
analysis of selected features of published articles.” Journal Of Language And Linguistic
Studies, 12, no.2: 117-134.