Consumer Behavior, Eighth Edition SCHIFFMAN & KANUK

Chapter 12
The Influence of Culture on Consumer Behavior

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What is Culture?

A detailed examination of the character of the total society, such us language, knowledge, laws, religions, food, customs, music, art, technology, work patterns, products and other artifacts that give a society its distinctive flavor.

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 Culture is a society's personality. Sum total of learned beliefs, values and customs that serve to direct the consumer behavior of members of a particular society. Each individuals perceives the world through his own cultural laws.

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Culture Satisfies Needs

Culture exists to satisfy the needs of the people within a society. It offers order, direction, and guidance in all phases of human problem solving by providing tried and true methods. For example: Culture provides standards and rules about when to eat (not b/w meals), where to eat (in a busy restaurant). What is appropriate to eat for breakfast (juice and cereals) lunch (a sandwich) Dinner ( something hot and good and healthy) etc.
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 Culture is also associated with what a society's member consider to be a necessity and what they view as luxury culture is learned. As children play they act out and rehearse important cultural lessons and situations. This cultural learning prepares them for later real life circumstances.

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How culture is learned???

(i) Three district forms of cultural learning. Formal learning: In which adults and older siblings teach a young family member how to Behave (ii) Informal learning: In which a child learns primarily by imitating the behavior of selected others, such as family, friends, or TV heroes. (iii) Technical learning: In which teachers instruct the child in an educational environment about what should be done

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Enculturation and Acculturation

The learning of one's own culture is known as Enculturation. The learning of new foreign culture is know as Acculturation.

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Language and Symbols

To communicate effectively with their audiences, marketers must use appropriate symbols to convey desired products images or characteristics. These symbols can be verbal or non-verbal. Verbal may include television announcements are an Ad in a magazine. Non verbal communication includes the use of such symbols as figure colors shapes etc.
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Language and Symbols

A symbol is anything that stand for something else. A symbol may have several, even contradictory, meanings. So the advertisers must ascertain exactly what the symbols is communicating to its intended audience.

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Ritual
Ritual is a type of symbolic activity consisting of a series of steps (Multiple Behaviors ) occruing in a fixed sequence and repeated over time. Culture includes various ritualized experience and behaviors. For example: Activity Typical Artifices Birthday Card, present, Cake with Candles

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Culture is shared
A particular belief, value or practice must be shared by a significant portion of the society. Culture frequently is viewed a group customs that link together the members of a society. Common language is the critical cultural component that make it possible for people to share values, experiences and customs.
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Continue
Consumer receive important cultural information from Ad. e.g. it has been hypothesized that one of the role of the advertising in sophisticated magazines such as vanity fair wine spectator and Martha Stewart living is to instruct reader how to dress, how to decorate their homes and what foods to serve guests. In other words what type of behaviors are most appropriate to their particular social class.
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Continue
Although the scope of Ad is often considered to be limited to influencing the demand for specific products and services. In cultural context Ad has the expanded mission of reinforcing established cultural values and adding in the dissemination of new tastes, habits and customs. Marketers recognize that ad is an important agent for social change in our society.
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Culture is dynamic
Many factors are likely to produce cultural changes within a given society. These factors may be, new technology, population shifts, resource shortages, wars ,changing values and customs borrowed from other cultures, marketers who monitor cultural changes also often find new opportunities to increase corporate profitability.

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Measurement of culture
Content Analysis conclusion about a society or specific aspects of a society or a comparison of two or more societies some times can be drawn from examining the content of particular message. Content analysis.. .focuses on the content of verbal written and pictorial communication (such as the copy and art composition of Ad)

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Content Analysis
. It is used as a relatively objective means of determining what social and cultural changes have occurred in a specific society or as a way of contrasting aspects of two different societies. For example: in a context analysis study comparing Americans and chine's TV commercials targeted to children, the research revealed that 82% of the chine's ads aimed at children were for food products where as 56% of Ads directed at American children were for toys
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Measurement of culture
Consumer fieldwork.to select a small group of people from a particular society and carefully observe their behavior. Based on such observations researchers draw conclusions about the values, beliefs, and customs of the society

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Characteristics of field observation

It takes place within a natural environment It is performed sometimes without the subject awareness It focuses on the observation of behavior

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Value measurement survey instruments

Data collection instruments called value instruments used by researchers to ask people how they feel about such basic personal and social concepts as freedom, comfort, national security and peace

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