ABSTRACT

O ne of the most difcult choices that multinational corporations face is deciding whether to run the same marketing campaign globally or to cus-tomize it to the local taste in different countries. In many cases, companies develop their marketing strategy in one country and then do “disaster checking” as they launch the same strategy in other countries instead of trying to discover what would work best in each market (Clegg, 2005). This often leads to ineffective marketing campaigns and damaged reputations. As new global markets emerge, and existing markets become increasingly segmented along ethnic or subcultural lines, the need to market effectively to consumers who have different cultural values has never been more important. Thus, it is no surprise that in the last decade or so, culture has rapidly emerged as a central focus of research in consumer behavior.