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Cross-Cultural
Brand Building: More Myths
By Michael Alan Hamlin
July 01, 2002
There's a lot more to cross-cultural
marketing and brand building than advertising campaigns. As we saw
last week with Paul Temporal's Jim Beam example, the impact of market
research findings may not show up in advertising as much as we'd
like to think it does, but it does show up in the way products are
packaged, formulated, and delivered. For instance, manufacturers
of sanitary napkins know that many Asian women prefer to purchase
the product in smaller quantities than their western counterparts.
Those with a stake in preserving cross-cultural inscrutability
might suggest some mysterious cultural reason for this preference.
In fact, the reason napkins and other personal care products are
purchased in small quantities is because poor households simply
can't afford to keep an inventory of these items. Unilever recently
turned its Lifebuoy bath soap into an extruded bar packaged in plastic
rather than a paper box, more than halving the cost in the Philippines.
Consumers even liked the plastic packaging, which was for more durable
when "storing" the soap than a paper box (unfortunately
for the environment).
The extruded Lifebuoy bar demolished competitors Safeguard
and Zest, which were forced to reduce prices but kept milled bars,
resulting in severely compressed margins. They are battling back,
demonstrating that there is a range in which consumers - even in
hard times - are willing to pay a reasonable premium for quality.
But again, this is not a cultural issue. It's an economic one.
Let's consider the examples of fast food chains like
McDonald's, Jollibee, and Café de Coral. A great deal has
been written, some of it by me, about how these companies do what
was once consider heretical: modify the product and product offerings
to suit local palates and preferences. Can't get much more cultural
than this, right? What hasn't been said, however, is that modifying
product to suit local palates is an exception, rather than the rule.
More importantly, most products and product offerings simply aren't
modified at all. And even more importantly, most restaurants' claims
to fame are based on unique, distinctive, proprietary menus and
recipes that the competition is supposed to have a tough time matching.
That's the business, not a cross-cultural marketing gimmick.
Of course, there are times when a product or services
is introduced to a market with an amazing lack of understanding
for contemporary norms, socially and in other respects. The insistence
of American automobile manufacturers for decades to sell only autos
with left-hand steering wheels in Japan is a good example. But that's
not a cultural issue. It's a regulatory (or exceptions thereto)
issue. People drive on the left-hand side of the road in Japan and
Japanese cars are manufactured with right-hand steering wheels.
Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong note that a once arrogant
Apple Computer refused to tailor the Macintosh for Japanese use.
They didn't even provide a Japanese language operating manual, and
charged software developers for access to operating system code.
As a result, few Japanese developers bothered writing programs for
the computer, making it virtual useless. For all this, Apple charged
its then-customary premium. Okay, language is cultural. But not
providing operating instructions doesn't have to do with cross-cultural
marketing, it has to do with stupidity.
I do have one example of cross-cultural marketing,
or rather a failure in cross-cultural marketing, that may actually
stand up. And it is that silly Tupperware case so frequently cited
as an example in discussions of cross-cultural marketing practices.
The Japanese hate being put on the spot, and so hate putting people
on the spot, too, even if it means money. So there were no parties,
and the product failed. But then again, when was the last time you
looked forward to being invited to a Tupperware party? And in the
meantime, direct marketers like Nu Skin are doing great in Japan.
So maybe Tupperware's problem was execution, not the channel.
While sensitivity to local norms and lifestyles, creativity
and innovation will always play a central role in effective cross-cultural
marketing and brand building, beware of charlatans that preach the
gospel of market inscrutability. They are false prophets. At the
end of the day, people are more and more alike everywhere, and are
only becoming more so.
The bottom line? Market quirks are just that: exceptions,
not the rule.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing director of consultancy
TeamAsia and the author of three books on Asian economies and companies.
His latest book is Marketing Asian Places, of which he is co-author.
His e-mail address is mahamlin@teamasia.com)
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