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International Marketing Programmer at Hallstead university. We would like to express our gratitude towards our supervisor Mr. Gabriel Barbour Away, for his important guidelines and help. A special thank also to the respondent of the companies that took part of this research. Your information and knowledge was necessary for completing this dissertation. At last we would like to thank for my classmates who gave us some useful suggestions during the thesis writing process. Hallstead, 2009 You Cue and Ghana Ting American Fast Food in Chinese Market: A Cross-cultural Perspective Abstract —The
Culture differences play a significant role in the international marketing, which has drawn many researchers attention. This dissertation will focus on how the cross-cultural environments influence the choice of marketing strategies. The theoretical framework of this study mainly contains cross-culture theories and 4? Marketing strategy. These theories are put together in an analytical model where a connection between the two theories is explained that will be used as a foundation in gathering and analyzing the empirical findings.
The qualitative research strategy is employed in this dissertation. Utilizing the multiple case studies, we choose two sample companies both from LISA. The empirical data was gathered through semi-structured interviews on the telephone. Data was also supplemented with secondary data such as company web pages and scientific articles. The conclusion can be drawn from this study is that culture differences influence the UP marketing strategies in both of the companies in different ways.
According to Doodle and Lowe (2008, chip. 8), standardization or globalization means to develop a marketing strategy as if the whole world was a unique market. It means to propose a standard product or service everywhere and to develop the same marketing-mix for every country. It will offer standardized products, prices and promotions campaigns and use a common distribution channels across all markets. On the other hand, adaptation or localization considers every region as a specific one and focuses on the cultural, regional and national uniqueness.
This strategy means that the company will adapt itself to each market in order to suit to the demands of every different region. When choosing the international marketing strategy, one of the factors that should be considered seriously is the culture difference because culture is a significant factor in influencing the consumer market and shopping behavior (Subliminal and Ball, 2001 Many definitions have been formulated for culture, Kookier and Chuckhole 1 American Fast Food in Chinese Market: A Cross-cultural Perspective —-The (1952) devoted an article to a review of more than 1 64 definitions of culture.
In this study, researchers will discuss some of these definitions and choose one of them to develop the research problem. Most researchers agree that cultural differences lead to different consumer responses across countries (Herrmann and Hetman, 2006). Also a lot of cases proved that, no matter how a company sells products or offers its services to another country, the marketing strategy will be influenced by the local cultural environment of the specific country and region.
Thus, today’s body of knowledge suggests that international marketing managers should at the very least, be cautious about insuring they understand the cultural differences when developing marketing activities (Herrmann and Hetman, 2006). In fact, the cultural variable is difficult to isolate and operate. Especially nowadays, with the increasingly globalizes economy, and increasingly blending culture, multinational companies should pay even more attention to analyzing the cultural environment, identifying the differences between values, and also establishing the strategy of cross-marketing accordingly.
As mentioned above, standardization strategy and adaptation strategy can be en as the two entry strategies which represent the two extremes and, usually, companies lie somewhere in between, and adapt some parts of the marketing mix to the specific culture and country, and let other parts of the marketing mix be standardized throughout all markets (Doodle and Lowe, 2008). Considering the impact cultural differences have on companiesџ entry strategies to new markets, these differences should also be crucial for a company]s marketing strategy in the foreign market.
This is especially the case when considering the consumers buying behaviors varies across cultures (Sunnier, 2000). 1. Research Problem Discussion Even though different researchers have contributed theories and developed models with the definition of culture and marketing strategy as their basis, few Of those existing models and theories focus 2 international marketing strategy American Fast Food in Chinese Market: A Cross-cultural perspective implementation in different cultural environments.
However, some international marketing literature (Doodle and Lowe, 2008; Griffin, 1994) supplies the theory support which refers to the cultural differences in different countries and regions and how these differences in culture affect he way a company should enter the new market. According to Sunnier (2002), these cultural differences are very important in consumer markets; this is because of the great impact culture has on the buying behavior of the individual.
For some companies, if they want to gain market share in different markets as much as possible, they should not only supply some same products and services in every market but also implement different strategies based on the different culture in the actual market. This study will focus on how the different cultural environments affect the implementation of international racketing strategies in some companies. 1. 3 Problem Formulation Thus, the problem formulation of this study will be: how do some big leading companies carry out their marketing strategies according to the cultural differences?
And how does the specific culture influence the international marketing strategies of multinational companies? 1. 4 Research Purpose Related to the research problem, the main purpose and aim of this study is to research the different marketing strategies in different cultural environments and to find out how the specific national culture affects the strategies which re implemented by some multinational companies in a certain industry. This study is limited to investigating American fast food companies operating in some other countries especially in Chinese market, and supplying products and services to the consumers in different countries and regions. This selection of companies delimits this study to only investigating multinational companies that are big and famous in the fast food industry. Therefore, the choice of the cases is KEF and McDonald’s, which are both typical, and representative of, American fast food companies.
Most of their marketing traceries are attractive and fascinating in the Chinese market. This study is delimited to the present time and does not investigate other fast food companies or consider the future marketing undertaken by the two companies which the researchers chose for this study. 1. 6 previous studies In recent years, a great many researchers have studied the subject of cultural differences and cross-culture comparisons within different sectors and areas (e. G. Kim, Forsyth and Gu, 2002; soiling, S, 2004; Monika and Moreover, 2005).
However, most of the previous studies in this area compared the cultural preferences between two, or more than two, nations and regions, and some Of them also studied the effects of culture differences to consumers] values, needs and buying behaviors. Only a few studies investigated the international marketing strategy implementation from a cross-cultural perspective. In the article “Cross-cultural consumer values, needs and purchase behavior”, written by Kim, Forsyth and Gu (2002), a study of consumer values, needs and purchasing behavior in two Asian countries is presented.
This research investigates the relationship between consumer values, needs and archiving behaviors and the loyalty to a certain brands in two different countries. The research concluded that consumers in different cultural environments will be affected by their cultural values, needs and behaviors when choosing some brand and so retain their brand loyalty (Kim et al, 2002). Even though how a specific brand or company should 4 implement the marketing strategy according to the cross culture was not investigated and the two countries they chose are both Asian countries so the culture contexts are similar in some extent.
Consequently, Kim, Forsyth and Gu (2002)CSS research is different from the research presented in this dissertation, as strategy implementation in different cultures is not investigated. In the article “Fast food and ethical consumer value: a focus on McDonald’s and KEF”, Monika and Moreover (2005) present research of how McDonald’s and KEF carry out their strategies in an ethical and socially responsible, way to young consumers in the LIKE.
This research concludes that ethical strategies are very important in fast food industry. Their investigation mainly focused on the ethical consumerњs values. Monika and Moreover study (2005) did not, forever, point out other specific considerations of marketing strategies or, from a cross-cultural perspective, because different cultural environments may influence the understanding of ethic issues. This means that Monika and Moreover]s study had a focus other than the study that will be conducted in this dissertation.
Throughout this study, the terms culture will be free intently used and the definitions for it is in this study as follow: Culture: “The sum total of learned beliefs, values and customs that serve to direct consumer behavior in a particular country market. ” (Doodle and Lowe, 008, p. 66) 2. Theoretical Frameworks The theoretical framework of this study is based on a number of relevant theories that are discussed in this part. The model which authors constructed in this study integrates cross-culture and UP marketing strategy.
It can be divided into two parts. Firstly, the authors will analyze some components of culture which lead to the 5 phenomenon of cross culture, such as the different values, languages and customer behaviors. During this process, Heftedјs culture dimensions will be employed as the approach to understand cross-culture better. Secondly, based on the analysis Of marketing standardization and adaptation, the marketing mix ups as main international marketing strategies will be used to achieve our research purpose. . 1 Culture and Cross-Culture 2. 1. 1 Culture Culture Language Consumer Behavior Values Figure 1 : Three components of culture (constructed by authors) When marketers discuss international marketing, one of the important issues often considered is the cultural differences. In relation to international marketing, culture can be defined as ‘the sum total Of learned beliefs, values, ND customs that serve to direct consumer behavior in a particular country’s market” (Doodle and Lowe, 2008, p. 73).
Such components as beliefs, values and customs are often ingrained in a society and have obvious differences among different countries. Cultural differences manifest themselves in several ways. Hefted (2001 ) distinguishes symbols, heroes, rituals and values. Among these , the underlying values are invisible. Although values are always invisible and may be hard to measure, they often play an important role when the marketers try to make decisions, which help to enter a foreign market. Also, according to Moose (2004), the values that characterize a society cannot be observed directly.