WEEK 2 DQ 2 - HOFSTEDE'S DIMENSIONS ON

CULTURE

WORD COUNT: 761

INTRODUCTION
Arguably, culture has got the biggest influence in the
broad spectrum of human behaviours. The widespread
effect of these implications is one of the reasons.
Increased globalization of products has made the need to
better understand cultural differences among nations
and ethic groups more important. The collective
programming of the mind referred to by Geert Hofstede
(Keegan et al, 2013) is a passive process that happens at
the subconscious level of the consumer within a
community. The strength of culture in influencing
consumers decision lies in the passive nature of its
inculcation even the members of the community are
hardly aware of the mind programming process going
on. The mind programming could either be about
physical substance (material dimension of culture) or
intangible substance, beliefs and values (non-material or
abstract dimension of culture). To a large extent, the non-
material dimension of culture has stronger bearing
consumer behaviour and how organisations should
position themselves in the marketplace. Hofstede went
ahead to develop dimensions of cultural contexts and
ranked them as (i) Power Distance (ii) Individualism (iii)
Masculinity (iv) Uncertainty Avoidance and (v) Long Term
Orientation (Wu, 2006; Keegan, 2013)
ATTITUDES, BELIEFS AND VALUES:
Attitudes, beliefs and values are vehicles through which
the culture of a society expresses itself - they give
context to the culture. Keegan (2013) defined attitude as
learned propensity to react in a consistent manner
towards a stimulus while beliefs are structured pattern
of knowledge, which the holder holds to be true about
an issue. When a belief becomes sustained over a period
of time and held by large number of people in the
society to be preferred over another, then it becomes a
value of that society. Values being the deepest
dimension of culture tends to play a larger role in the
decision-making process of a consumer and to that
extent one can argue that values have the biggest effect
on global and multinational companies in their quest to
expand to new markets.

STRATEGIC MARKETING IMPLICATIONS OF
CULTURE
Culture became more important to marketing when
hitherto local companies began to expand beyond the
shores of their country of origin. Market growth by an
organization is a function of additional sales that they
can make of their products or services. These additional
sales will only come if the consumers and markets accept
the differentiating features of such products and service.
Understanding the culture of a community helps to
understand their needs and how they will react to a piece
of product. Competitive edge will only come for a product
if it understands the consumers (community) well enough
to have a differentiating feature that addresses a specific
need that other products do not address well enough.
Gaining market and consumer insights is very important
to building competitive advantage. Culture of a society is
a major driver of their insights.
It is a fact that twins from the same mother raised in
different parts of the work will react to the same stimulus
differently partly because their frames of reference differ.
Their preferences will also differ.
LESSONS AND PERSPECTIVES FROM NIGERIA:
Nigeria is a secular country. However, the Northern part
of the country which comprises of Hausa tribe, is highly
Islamized (http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/06/boko-
haram-the-northern-nigeria-hausaland/). There is a
recent clamour by Hausas of Northern Nigeria to uphold
strict Islamic values. This led to the banning of
consumption of beer in major Northern states in 2013.
However, Heineken Nigeria which happens to be a major
client of mine continued shipping beer to the North until
several truck transporting the drinks were apprehended
in November 2013 and all their content, more than
240,000 bottles of different beer brands were destroyed
by the Islamic Police called Hisbah


In the same vein, while KFC restaurant could not enter into
the Nigerian market for a long time until 2009. Things
began to thaw when it recognizes the need to reflect the
local preference for hot and spicy food. This is a reflection of
the love for pepper by most African countries. Upon the
appropriate formulation of the product to reflect local taste
preferences, the restaurant chain began to expand in
Nigeria as it gained competitive advantages over existing
ones.

CONCLUSION
To be a truly successful multinational company, the
management of the company must recognize the
uniqueness of each market and reflect them in product
design, presentation and offering. While globalization is
increasing the incidence of commonalities among nations,
Fig. 1 - Islamic Police destroying bottles of confiscated beer seized from Heineken
Plc. in Northern Nigeria at about November 2013. Source:
http://news.msn.com/world/islamic-police-destroy-240000-bottles-of-beer.

very strong ethnic and societal values still exist today and
they greatly influence how consumers react to companys
products.

REFERENCES:
Wu, M. (2006) Intercultural Communication Studies
XV: 1 2006 Wu - Hofstedes Cultural Dimensions 30
Years Later: A Study of Taiwan and the United States.
Available Online:
http://www.uri.edu/iaics/content/2006v15n1/04%20
Ming-Yi%20Wu.pdf. Accessed 31
st
April, 2014.
Keegan, W.J. & Green, M.C. (2013) Global marketing.
7th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.