Cultural Environment
People toss about the word “culture”
in several different forms or meanings. We
hear of cultural heritage, cultural events,
high culture, cultural sensitivity, and multi-
culturalism. Now more than ever, culture
seems to be center stage.
Given all the talk about culture, we
can assume that its growing importance has
not gone unnoticed by marketers. For
marketers, culture represents both a threat
and an opportunity. Failure to recognize and
respect culture means courting disaster in
the marketplace. Adapting to it and
incorporating it into the marketing mix holds
great potential for growth through customer
satisfaction.
In business schools, the notion of
culture is typically discussed in the context
of international commerce. Marketing
departments offer classes devoted entirely to
understanding the cultural components of a
global marketplace. (We offer such a course
at the MBA level, though much of the
undergraduate global marketing class
focuses on the topic of culture.)
So what is this thing called culture?
Is it a thing at all? The answer is simple:
yes and no(!). Culture is a collection of
concepts that are separate and distinct, but
that blend together to form a single overall
concept. In this class, we will view culture
from a somewhat abstract perspective. At
some level of abstraction, all cultures
possess the same dimensions. How these
dimensions manifest themselves in
individual cultures differs vastly from
country to country – and in some cases
within a single country.
What Is Culture?
The definition of culture adopted for
this class takes a broad view of the concept
by applying it to virtually every aspect of
daily life. Culture is defined as “a learned,
shared, compelling, and pervasive set of
symbols and meanings that provide a basis
for solving problems faced by the entire
society as well as individuals and groups
within it.” This definition implies several
facts about culture.
Culture is Learned
Humans are not born with their
culture; it is not genetically passed from one
generation to the next. People learn culture
through various socialization processes,
which continue throughout their lives. For
example, my children were both born in
Central America and both joined my family
as infants less than six months old. Thus,
they are growing up very much as
Americans and learning American culture –
for good and for ill.
Culture is Shared
Because culture ties together
members of a society, by definition, it must
be shared. Within a society, interpretations
and manifestations of culture may vary.
But, even with its variations, all members of
the society share cultural values, meanings,
and understandings that tie them together
and provide the basis for their membership
in that society. Importantly, members of a
 Cultural Environment – page 2

society need not participate in the various
manifestations of culture. Yet, they tend to
possess an understanding of those
manifestations.
Culture is Compelling
We cannot escape our culture and we
cannot avoid behaving in ways consistent
with our cultural values. Indeed, if we
could, at some level culture would fail in its
purpose. Culture evolved because it serves a
purpose: solving problems faced by society.
If all people in a society could easily deny
their culture and behave independently of it,
culture would fail as a tool for solving
societal problems.
Culture is Pervasive
Culture’s symbols and meanings are
everywhere; there is no place from which
they are entirely absent. Culture reflects
itself in everything from art to politics, from
architecture to family size. Importantly,
culture also influences the relationships
people perceive between various cultural
institutions.
Functions of Culture
Having noted that culture exists to
solve problems, we should briefly discuss
what sorts of societal problems culture
solves. A list of cultural functions is given
in Exhibit 1. As you read over them, think
about the ways different cultures solve these
problems and how marketing may play a
role in each.
For example, consider the first,
acquiring food, clothing and shelter. In
some cultures with less economic
development than ours, families or groups of
families acquire food by hunting it or
growing it, which is, of course, a drastic
departure from the solution our culture
provides. Some might argue that the
American way of providing food is not a
function of culture, but a function of our
economy. However, a society’s economic
structure reflects its culture, not the other
way around.
Even in countries with developed
economies, different solutions for the
delivery of food have evolved. We shop at
supermarkets for foods that are grown on
large corporate farming operations. This is
because our desire for cheap food and low
taxes (a value of our culture) is greater than
our desire for the institution of the family
farm. This is not so in all cultures that have
developed economies. Some use taxes to
subsidize small family farms in order to
preserve them as a social institution. Thus,
their cultures evolved somewhat different
solutions for the production of foods. By
thinking abstractly about culture, you should
also recognize that its implications do not

Exhibit 1. The Ten Functions of Culture

1. acquiring food, clothing and shelter.
2. protection from human enemies and natural disasters.
3. regulation of sexuality
4. child rearing and children's instruction in socially acceptable behavior.
5. division of labor.
6. sharing and exchanging the product of human work.
7. providing social controls against deviant human behavior.
8. providing incentives to guide, direct and motivate human behavior.
9. distributing power and legitimizing its use.
10. providing a sense of priorities (cultural values, including religion) to life.

apply solely to international marketing
situations. Within large complex cultures
such as ours, there exist “cultures within
cultures” or “subcultures” that can differ in
ways significant for marketers. We will
discuss those later.
Cultural Universals
Sociologists and anthropologists who
study culture (e.g., Feibelman 1946,
Schwartz and Bilsky 1987) have developed
lists of what they term “cultural universals.”
While their lists differ by organization and
levels of specificity, they all contain
essentially the same components of what
they claim every human culture from the
dawn of civilization has contained. In one
form or another, these cultural universals
provide mechanisms through which culture
functions in the ten ways described in
Exhibit 1.
Cultural universals provide the basis
for comparing cultures because they show in
abstract terms the similarities between
cultures. Ironically, it is through these
abstract similarities that researchers can best
understand the differences across cultures as
well. Indeed, when we discuss measurement
of culture in class, cultural universals will
play an important part.
Our earlier definition of culture
states that culture is a set of shared symbols
and meanings. Using cultural universals, we
can add some detail to what we mean by
“symbols and meanings” and use them in
ways pertinent to understanding buyer
behavior. For purposes of this discussion,
we broadly categorize these universals into
symbols, values, myths, and rituals.
Symbols
Every culture creates symbols, which
are simply some word, image, or object used
to stand for something else. The most
Cultural Environment – page 3
obvious set of symbols ascribed to human
culture come through written language,
where the combinations of written symbols
create words that convey meanings about
life and the world. When doing business
globally, marketers must take care to use
language properly in various cultures and
contexts, lest they offend members of the
culture or use language in ways unhelpful to
their objectives.
Beyond language, marketers must
take care to find positive symbolism and
avoid negative symbolism in all of their
marketing efforts. When marketing in
unfamiliar cultures, symbolism can arise in
many unexpected ways. For example, a
U.S. golf ball manufacturer discovered that
its disappointing sales in Japan was in part
due to packaging its golf balls in sets of
four, which is a number associated with
death to superstitious Japanese. AT&T
produced a series of ads to run in Russia. In
the ads, models gave the “thumbs up” sign
with their palms visible. This particular
symbol is offensive to many Russians.
Fortunately, the ads never ran, but the cost
of producing them was wasted.
Despite these pitfalls, symbolism lies
at the heart of what marketers hope to
achieve with their brands. Marketers use
brand names as symbols of their products.
Over time, many symbols assume status as
cultural icons and take on lives of their own,
becoming deeply rooted in the culture. For
example, think of what brands such as
Disney or McDonalds mean to most
Americans. The brands have come to stand
for positive values even apart from the
marketing contexts in which they’re most
commonly used.
Values
Cultural values encompass such a
broad variety of meanings that entire books
have been written on the subject. Obviously,

these brief comments can hardly cover them
in any detail. Still, marketers must develop
an appreciation for values in all cultures in
which they operate. As the term implies,
cultural “values” represent those elements of
life to which people in a society ascribe
importance – or value.
Writers on the subject have divided
the concept of values into categories too
numerous to mention. Where marketing is
concerned, we should focus on one cultural
manifestation of values, which entails how
members of a society behave. These are
cultural “norms.” As this term implies,
norms suggest the notion of what’s
considered normal or acceptable behavior.
Norms, therefore, are rules that
concern what behaviors are considered
acceptable and unacceptable. Norms fall
into one of two broad categories. “Enacted
norms” refer to rules that society has
specifically decided upon. The most
obvious enacted norms are our system of
laws. Enacted norms are important to
marketers in the sense that marketing
activities should fall well within the bounds
of enacted norms. However, as the saying
goes, just because it’s legal doesn’t mean
it’s right.
Therefore, marketers should also
learn a society’s “crescive norms,” which
are generally understood but not formally
codified. Crescive norms must be learned
through socialization processes in which
people interact with members of a culture.
Moreover, crescive norms will be more
subtle than enacted norms. They can vary
widely depending on who in a culture you
talk to. Many members of a culture may not
adhere to certain crescive norms while still
understanding that they exist.
Myths.
In the English language, the word
myth generally implies a degree of untruth.
Cultural Environment – page 4
This need not be so; myths may contain
varying degrees of truth and fiction.
Solomon (2006) provides a good definition
of myth, which is “a story that contains
symbolic elements and that expresses shared
emotions and ideals of a culture.” Nowhere
does this definition imply that a mythical
story need be untrue – though, of course,
they often are. For example, American
children all learn the famous story of George
Washington and the cherry tree (see
endnote), which historians all agree has no
basis in fact. Yet, this story about one of our
country’s most revered heroes reflects the
virtues of honesty and bravery.
Religion contains much mythology,
much of it factually verifiable. For example,
we know factually that Jesus Christ was a
real man who lived approximately 2000
years ago. Christians take as a matter of
faith that the story of His life told in the
Bible is factually true – though disagreement
exists even among Christians as to whether
all of it is literally true. Irrespective of what
parts are or are not true, it all represents a
story that expresses shared ideals and
emotions, and one that shapes our culture in
the most fundamental of ways.
Joseph Campbell (1988), the famous
scholar of mythology, classifies myth in four
ways according to its purpose.
“Metaphysical myths” help explain the
origins of existence. “Cosmological myths”
emphasize the interrelated nature of the
universe. “Sociological myths” provide a
social code necessary for maintaining social
order. And “psychological myths” provide
models of personal conduct.
Marketers incorporate myth into
their efforts in innumerable ways. For
example, myth often involves a struggle
between good and evil. Marketers
commonly incorporate this culturally based
phenomenon into advertising that follows a
similar theme – users of their products
(good) confront some impediment to use or

problem the product addresses (evil). Or
marketers may develop mythical characters
to represent their product’s struggle to bring
goodness to the lives of their customers.
The very fact that they do represents a facet
of culture. In other words, marketing did
not have to evolve in this way. The reason it
did can be explained by culture.
Rituals
We turn finally to “rituals,” also an
important part of culture with major
implications for marketing. Rituals are
“specific sets of behaviors, performed
repeatedly in specific sequences and
intended to carry symbolic meanings beyond
the behaviors themselves.”
In their obvious forms, rituals are
easily identified. We often first associate
rituals with such formal ceremonies such
religious observances. However, we
commonly participate in informal rituals as
well. Consider the rituals associated with
important holidays such as Christmas gift
giving, Fourth of July fireworks, or carving
the Thanksgiving Turkey. Think of other
celebratory rituals such as blowing out
candles on birthday cakes (after making a
wish, of course), or throwing the bouquet at
weddings. In our culture, rituals create
entire industries or hold sway over financial
Exhibit 2. Ritual Types and Examples
Type of Ritual
Religious
Rites of Passage
Civic
Family
Gift Giving
Personal
Adapted from Rook (1985)
Cultural Environment – page 5
success or failure. For example, some
retailers enjoy over half of their annual sales
in the month between Thanksgiving and
Christmas.
Important as they are to marketers,
these more obvious examples may obscure
the smaller hidden rituals that govern
significant portions of our lives. For
example, many people enjoy some sort of
“morning routine.” These personal rituals
serve the obvious purpose of getting
individuals ready for work or school, but to
many people they also provide a sense of
comfort, stability and security. Indeed, when
circumstances change them we may even
experience some sense of discomfort or loss.
One consumer researcher (Rook
1985) studied rituals and related them to
consumptive behavior. In the process, he
identified several types of rituals that hold
some importance to marketers. Exhibit 2
summarizes a few of these. Keep in mind
the behavioral and repetitious nature of
these rituals. With birthdays, for example,
giving gifts alone does not make these
celebrations rituals. Rather, the common
behaviors of having friends and family
nearby, serving cake, blowing out candles,
singing “Happy Birthday, and opening each
gift one at a time to honor and respect the
giver constitute the ritual in many of its
variations.
Examples
Baptism, Mass, Prayers
Marriage, Graduation
Elections, Inaugurations, Trials, Parades
Mealtimes, Bedtimes, Birthday Parties,
Individual holiday celebrations
Christmas, Birthdays, Engagements and
Weddings
Grooming, Household

Marketers routinely attempt to
influence the nature of rituals themselves or
even attempt to introduce new rituals into a
culture. The growth of the Superbowl as a
party event was greatly accelerated through
the concerted efforts of America’s brewers.
Recently, Milton-Bradley, the game
manufacturer, ran advertising promoting a
“weekly games night” for families,
suggesting that families can grow closer by
setting aside an evening per week to play a
board game together. In so doing, the
company is suggesting families develop a
sort of ritual.
Subculture
Cultures are not uniform. Within a
broad culture there may exist many divisions
that distinguish themselves from each other
– although they all belong to the same
overall culture. These divisions within
culture are called “subculture.”
The existence and prominence of
subcultures in the United States runs
contrary to our description of America as a
“melting pot.” In truth, it’s probably more
like a salad. In combination all the
ingredients contribute its overall flavor, yet
each ingredient can be identified as distinct.
In this section, we’ll examine a few of the
ways subculture can manifest itself and how
those ways can affect buyer behavior.
Ethnic Subculture
As we will discover in our upcoming
discussion about demographics, the United
States continues to grow more ethnically
diverse, even as the cultural characteristics
of ethnic groups continue to change. These
changes create a wide variety of marketplace
behaviors and consumption patterns of great
importance to marketers.
For example, media usage differs
dramatically among ethnic groups. People
Cultural Environment – page 6
of all ethnicities enjoy seeing elements of
their cultures reflected in the media. This
trend is especially pronounced among the
two largest ethnic minorities in the United
States, African Americans and Hispanic
Americans.
Because Hispanic culture centers to
such a large degree on language, the growth
of Spanish language media has paralleled
the growth of the Hispanic population.
Indeed, to illustrate the economic value of
Spanish language media, consider NBC’s
recent purchase of Telemundo, a Spanish
cable network, for three billion dollars. The
largest Spanish television network,
Univision, has a market capitalization of
almost nine billion dollars. Growth in these
organizations can be attributed to Hispanics’
desires for media (and media advertising)
targeted to them in their most familiar terms.
Exhibit 3, which shows the ten most
viewed television programs for the week of
August 7, 2007, divided according to race.
Among Hispanics, the Spanish speaking
network, Univision, captured all ten spots.
Hispanic audiences clearly prefer Spanish
language programming, a fact that suggests
a strong identification with their own
culture. Reaching Hispanic customers
clearly requires marketers to develop an
appreciation of the Spanish language and
Hispanic cultural images.
African American viewership also
differs markedly from those of other ethnic
groups. Exhibit 3 shows that African
Americans and Whites overlap in some
program choices, however, most programs
favored by blacks did not appear in the top
ten programs preferred by Whites. Because
they share a common language, both groups
viewed programming on the major broadcast
networks. As an aside, note how poorly the
ABC television network performed during
the week in question. ABC did not show up
in the top ten among Whites, who comprise
about 70% of all television viewers and only
 Cultural Environment – page 7

Hispanic Viewers African American Viewers White Viewers

Rank Program Net Program Net Program Net
1 Destilando Amor Wed UNI NFL On Fox Presn 1 FOX 60 MINUTES CBS
2 Destilando Amor Thu UNI CSI: NY CBS CSI CBS
3 Destilando Amor Tue UNI Primetime: Crime ABC America's Got Talent NBC
4 Destilando Amor Mon UNI Without A Trace CBS Without A Trace CBS
5 Destilando Amor Fri UNI NFL On Fox Pst Game FOX Criminal Minds CBS
6 Don Francisco Presenta UNI 60 Minutes CBS Power Of Ten Preview CBS
7 Cristina UNI Hell's Kitchen FOX CSI: NY CBS
8 Aqui Y Ahora UNI I-Caught ABC Two And A Half Men CBS
9 Familia P. Luche UNI NBC NFL Pre-Season NBC Hell's Kitchen FOX
10 Amar Sin Limites UNI CSI: Miami CBS Dateline NBC-Mon NBC
Exhibit 3. TV Viewing by Race (Source: Nielsen Media Research for Week of 8/9/07)

took two of the top ten spots among African
American viewers.
Different television viewing choices
translates into different marketing and
advertising strategies for marketers. Even
similar products may be marketed
differently to different cultures. Obvious
examples of this are foods and fashions. On
occasion, however, marketers must walk
something of a fine line when marketing
these products cross-culturally. This is
because products originating in one ethnic
subculture may require adaptation or
modification before it sells well in another.
In turn, members of the first subculture can
accuse marketers of “watering down” bits of
their cultural heritage.
Some products find popularity in
many ethnic subcultures but may be used in
subtly different ways in each. For example,
a research study by Carnation revealed that
blacks and whites both enjoyed Carnation’s
Instant Breakfast Drink, but used the
product in slightly different ways. Whites
tend to drink it as a low calorie substitute for
a regular breakfast, whereas blacks consume
it as a drink with breakfast. Carnation
quickly adjusted their advertising strategy,
targeting specific ads toward African
Americans to capitalize on this difference in
usage.
Of course ethnic subcultures extend
far beyond black and Hispanic; our focus on
these two groups arises simply because of
their size. Obviously, significant
opportunities exist for marketing to Asian-
Americans, Asian-Indian Americans, and
other ethnic minorities with strong and
identifiable subcultures. Perhaps even more
significant are the opportunities to take from
these subcultures marketable ideas that will
find receptivity among the population as a
whole. Indeed, one favorable aspect of our
American cultural identity remains our
willingness to try new things.
Religious Subculture
While religion and ethnicity
frequently go hand-in-hand, just as often
they do not. Consider only one example.
During the rise of the Spanish empire,
Catholicism’s European roots spread
inexorably through Latin America. Today,
Catholicism plays a central role in the lives
of whites and Hispanics alike.
In the United States, religion itself
does not influence daily consumption to the
degree that ethnicity does. Certainly, the
fact that some religions place restrictions on
certain foods, require certain attire, or
promote certain educational avenues affects
marketplace behavior. However, compared
to ethnicity, the direct influence of religious
subculture pales.

The larger role of religious
subculture on marketplace behavior is more
subtle and indirect. Religious worship
produces communities of people and these
communities socialize members to certain
patterns of consumption. Thus, in terms of
doctrine, religious subculture plays a modest
role in consumption. In terms of creating
venues for human interaction, religious
subculture plays an important but indirect
role in shaping consumption.
Regional Subcultures
Travel our country extensively, and
you’ll quickly develop an appreciation for
regional subculture. Foods, music, fashion,
rituals, and the ebb and flow of daily life
vary widely in different regions of the
country. And, as you might expect, these
differences impact marketing efforts
enormously.
My own experience growing up in
the Southwest, moving to the Midwest, and
marrying a woman from the South has been
very instructive in this regard. For example,
in the Southwest, cattle ranching remains
one of the largest industries. The
prominence of the “cowboy culture” shapes
daily life and consumption. Pickup trucks,
boots, Wrangler jeans, and smokeless
tobacco, for example, are commonplace
there – even among college students. I
noticed their collective absence here almost
the first day after I moved to the Midwest.
Certainly many other identifiable
subcultures exist beyond those just
discussed. The point to this discussion is the
need for marketer sensitivity to variations in
consumption based on culture and
subculture. Failing to appreciate their
effects is like throwing away opportunity.
Cultural Environment – page 8
Sources
Material on cultural universals came from
Campbell, Joseph (1988), The Power of
Myth. New York: Doubleday.
Felbelman, James K. (1946), The Theory of
Human Culture. New York: Duell, Sloan
and Pearce.
Rook, Dennis W. (1985), “The Ritual
Dimension of Consumer Behavior,” Journal
of Consumer Research, 12(3), 251-264.
Schwartz, Shalom H. and Bilsky, Wolfgang
(1987), “Toward a Universal Psychological
Structure of Human Values,” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 53 (3),
550-562.
Solomon, Michael (2006), Consumer
Behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Material on subculture was adapted from
Peter, J. Paul and Jerry C. Olson (2004),
Consumer Behavior and Marketing
Strategy. Homewood, IL: Irwin-McGraw
Hill.
Note: A surprising number of students are
unfamiliar with this American myth. If you
are, here it is, briefly:
As legend would have it, young George
Washington received a hatchet as a present
from his father. One day soon after, his
father saw a cherry tree chopped down. He
found young George and asked him if had
done it. Knowing he would be severely
punished, young George bravely said,
“Father, I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down
the cherry tree.”