ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the usefulness of the study of culture in the determination of global marketing strategy, and how the cultures have been affected by globalization. It reviews the extent to which the cultures have remained diverse in the era of globalization. Ignoring cultural differences between countries has been cited as one of the causes of many business failures. In addition, national character traits can be very difficult to detect if people were raised in multicultural environments and work across national borders. Cultural values affect many decisions inherent in the marketing mix, especially product and promotional considerations. Easterners believe in the continuous shaping of personality traits by situational influence. Cultural drivers may be reflected in the social climate of communities at the bottom of the pyramid. While concepts of culture, especially Hofstede’s, have not explicitly referred to cultural distance, they are used to assess multifaceted and sophisticated differences between/across culture systems.
