2. Chapter 5
The Meaning and
Nature of Culture

3. Learning Objectives
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
Understand the meaning and nature of culture.
Discuss the ideas of cultural blueprints, categories, and principles.
Explain why the fact that culture is learned is significant to marketers.
Describe the importance of cultural values to consumer behavior and some ways of measuring cultural values.

4. Learning Objectives (continued)
Give some examples of cultural myths and symbols and marketing’s role in reproducing them.
Explain and identify some examples of consumer rituals.
Explain cultural creolization and the role of marketing in this process.

5. The Baby Jogger
Will it diffuse in
other cultural contexts?

6. Exhibit 5.1 Two Views of Culture and Consumer Behavior

7. Meaning and Nature of Culture
Culture consists of shared blueprints or schemas both for action and for understanding.
Cultural categories
organize time, space, nature, and the human community
Cultural principles
values, norms, and beliefs that allow things to be grouped into cultural categories, ranked, and interrelated
Marketing challenge: aligning products with cultural blueprints, categories, and principles.

8. Cultural Values Instrumental values Terminal values
Cultural values are those shared broadly across a society, values that are conditioned at the society level and reinforced and augmented at successive subcultural levels.
Instrumental values
shared beliefs about how people should behave and desired end states.
Terminal values
desirable life goals

9. Cultural Values (continued)
Value-Attitude-Behavior Hierarchy
abstract values affect midrange attitudes that led to specific consumer behaviors
Value measures
Rokeach Value Survey (RVS)
List of Values (LOVs)
Consumer ethnocentrism
preference for one’s own system of tastes and preferences over those of another cultural group
Materialism
importance consumer attaches to worldly possessions or consumption-based orientation to happiness seeking

10. A Comparison Between Brazil and The U.S.
on a Few Rokeach Terminal Values
Terminal Value Brazil U.S. 1981
Overall Rank Overall Rank
True Friendship
Mature Love
Happiness
Inner Harmony
Family Security
A World at Peace
Freedom (independence)
Self-Respect
Source: Wagner A. Kamakura and Jose Afonso Mazzon (1991), “Value Segmentation: A Model
for the Measurement of Values and Value Systems,” Journal of Consumer Research, 18 (September),

11. Cultural Myths and Symbols
a story containing symbolic elements that express shared emotions and cultural values, maintain social order by authorizing a social code
Urban legends
stories passed by word of mouth that purport to be nearly first hand accounts of real events, but are fictions
Cultural symbols
objects that represent beliefs and values
Conspicuous consumption
acquisition and visibility of “luxury” goods and services to demonstrate one’s ability to afford them

12. Cultural Rituals Repetitive behavioral sequences
Taken-for-granted scripts
Exhibit arbitrary patterns
Incorporate values
Sustain social consensus
Integrate interpersonal behaviors
Examples include entry, exit, grooming, support, possession, exchange, divestment

13. Cultural Rituals (continued)
behaviors that occur in a relatively fixed sequence, and that tend to be repeated periodically
Possession rituals
when products move from the marketplace to the home or workplace
Grooming rituals
private behaviors that aid in the transition from private to public self and back again
Divestment rituals
occur when consumers relinquish possession of objects

14. Cultural Rituals (continued)
Exchange rituals
Holiday gift giving
Rites of passage
Life cycles of rituals
Global consumption of rituals

15. Chinese Moon Festival moon cake
On the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar
The custom of paying homage to the fairy and Jade rabbit is gone, but moon cakes are showing improvement every year. There are hundreds of varieties of moon cakes on sale a month before the arrival of the Moon Festival. Some moon cakes are of very high quality and very delicious. An overseas tourist is advised not to miss it if he or she happens to be in China during the Moon Festival.
moon cake

16. Guidelines for Cultural Awareness
Culture is an all-encompassing phenomenon.
Culture is learned.
Enculturation
process of learning culture
Acculturation
process of learning a new or foreign culture through a direct or indirect experience of others
Culture is patterned.
It is repeated and reinforced throughout the society
It is reaffirmed and renewed through ritual consumption experience
It tells us what things connect with what other things

17. Guidelines for Cultural Awareness
Diderot effect
force that encourages an individual to maintain a cultural consistency in his/her complement of consumer goods
Culture is adaptive and dynamic
Culture is an open system
it influences and is influenced by changes in their environment

18. 1950s U.S. Kitchen Appliances

19. Traditional English Living Room

20. Danish Modern Living Room

21. Plate of Sushi

22. The Diderot Effect Have you ever bought a pair of shoes…?
Moral force that encourages an individual to maintain a cultural consistency in his/her complement of consumer goods.

23. Diderot Effect: Managerial Implications

24. Globalization, Consumer Culture, and Cultural Creolization
an organized social and economic arrangement in which markets govern the relationship between meaningful ways of life and the symbolic resources on which they depend
Characteristics of culture:
Global expansion
Increasing materialism
Parallel changes in personal identity
Movement of economic migrants, religious pilgrims, and guest workers between developing world and cosmopolitan

25. Globalization, Consumer Culture, and Cultural Creolization (continued)
Trends:
Global spread of brands and consumption practices
Creolization
consumption patterns that combine elements of local and foreign consumption traditions
Nostalgic defense
ethnocentric consumer reaction against globalization, rejecting foreign consumption consumption and values
Increasing consumption of presumably authentic cultural products from transitional and Third World cultures

26. Cultural Symbols Cultural symbols are shared symbolic meanings.
G.W.
Cultural Symbols
Taj Mahal
Cultural symbols are shared symbolic meanings.
Culture is reflected in core symbols.
Consumer goods often become core symbols in a culture.
Mt. Fuji
Danbø

27. Contemporary Herero Costume, Botswana

28. Brand Symbols: Bibendum, The Michelin Man

29. Some Brand Symbols = Cultural Symbols

30. Goods Become National Symbols

31. Key Terms acculturation conspicuous consumption consumer ethnocentrism
core symbols
culture
cultural categories
cultural principles
cultural rituals
cultural symbols
Diderot effect
divestment rituals
enculturation
exchange rituals
grooming rituals
Hofstede’s worker values
instrumental values
List of Values (LOV)
materialism
myths
norms
open systems
possession rituals

32. Key Terms (continued) rites of passage Rokeach Value Survey (RVS)
terminal values
urban legends
value-attitude-behavior hierarchy
values