Cross Cultural Barriers to be Overcome when Marketing into New Markets Internationally

Essay by liatsUniversity, Master'sA+, August 2004

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This paper will overview the cross-cultural barriers marketers face when marketing into new markets internationally.

Defining the key words culture, globalization and international marketing are brought and discussed in this paper. Different cross-cultural factors that need to be considered when marketing internationally will be introduced in this discussion, such as; barriers to exporting, the consumers behaviour and reluctance to accept foreign products, the market entry timing a company has to take into consideration and the company's involvement level, new product introduction, cross-cultural negotiation behaviour, managing cross-cultural business partners and strategic alliances, the effect that the international products have on the consumers and their reluctance to globalization. The impact of innovation is influenced by the different culture aspects, and understanding these barriers is crucial for a company's success in the new markets it chooses to enter.

Definition of Culture

The definition of culture brought by Hofstede (1980, p.19) is "...the interactive aggregate of common characteristics that influence a group's response to its environment."

According to, Tse. D, Lee K.. Vertinsky I. & Wehrung D. (1998, p. 82) " Culture may be reflected in general tendencies of persistent preference for particular states of affairs over others, persistent preferences for specific social processes over other, and general rules for selective attention, interpretation of environmental cues, and responses. It is generally known that culture may provide detailed prescriptions (norms) for specific classes of situations while leaving other domains relatively unregulated. National and ethnic cultures are thus distinguished in their degree of regulation of behaviour, attitudes, and values, the domain of regulation, and the consistency and clarity of regulation and tolerance of other cultures.

Culture influences values, attributions and emotions, which in turn influence the perception of product and service attributes (Malhotra et al., 1994). It is well known that values influence the importance attached...