Cultural Values and Consumer Behavior

A society's values, customs, norms, artistic expressions, social structures, and intellectual capabilities are represented by its culture. A community's collective values, standards, and priorities are expressed through its cultural values. Most advertising communications worldwide to some extent reflect the cultural values of the target market. Cultures keep changing, therefore marketers must keep an eye on the sociocultural context in order to promote current products more successfully and create new products that are in line with evolving cultural trends. Understanding cultural changes is a challenging task since various factors, such as new technologies, population changes, resource shortages, and habits from other cultures, create cultural changes within a specific society.

Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory

Geert Hofstede created the cultural aspects theory as a foundation for intercultural communication. The theory demonstrates how a society's culture affects the values of its people and how these values connect to behavior. The theory includes six national culture country comparison scales. They are the power distance index (PDI), individualism vs. collectivism (IDV), masculinity vs. femininity (MAS), uncertainty avoidance index (UAI), long-term orientation vs. short-term normative orientation (LTO), and indulgence vs. restraint (IVR).

 The level of respect and obedience to authority is shown by the power distance index (PDI)I. Individualism vs. collectivism (IDV) evaluates how much people prefer to be associated with a group or for themselves individually. Masculinity vs. femininity (MAS):  an environment where there are distinct expectations for men and women is known as a masculine culture or male society. Men are expected to be aggressive, forceful, and driven by material achievement in a masculine culture. Women are expected to be kind, people-oriented, and life-quality-oriented. Hofstede asserts that a feminine culture or civilization is one in which gender roles are more flexible. Both men and women are supposed to be kind, people-oriented, and concerned with the quality of life. The uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) outlines how much nations avoid the unknown. Long-term orientation vs. short-term normative orientation (LTO) illustrates how societies interact with the present and the future by either valuing traditions or following modernity. The indulgence vs. restraint (IVR) index compares a country's desire for having no restrictions on enjoying life right now versus its readiness to postpone immediate satisfaction in favor of long-term rewards.

Cultural Learning

Although some cultures have multiple languages, society's members share their values and traditions through a common language. We acquire cultural norms and conventions mostly from family and peers, and we start to grasp at a very young age which acts are acceptable and which are not. Three types of cultural learning have been identified by anthropologists: formal learning, informal learning, and technical learning. Childhood is also a time when we develop our ethical beliefs as we absorb them from our parents, teachers, and other influential adults. Acculturation (learning one's own culture) and enculturation (learning about a new or foreign culture) are two different processes according to anthropologists. Media, advertising, and marketing content all reflect cultural values and effectively convey them to all societal members.

Cultural values are represented in the form of languages, symbols, communications, and objects. A symbol is anything that represents another thing.  which can be either verbal or nonverbal. Words are linguistic symbols, and any advertisement's text is made up of symbols. Ritualized activities are a part of cultures in addition to language and symbolism. A ritual is a symbolic activity that includes several actions that occur in a set order and are periodically repeated.

Understanding Cultural values.

Content analysis, consumer field observation, and value measurement tools are the most often used methods for measuring cultural values. The focus of content analysis is on the messages that are conveyed in societies' oral, written, and visual communications, including advertisements. Anthropologists typically observe cultures through field observation, which is studying the regular behavior of chosen members of society, when analyzing a particular society. Researchers make assumptions about the values, beliefs, and customs of the community they are studying based on their observations. The Rokeach Value Survey, the Values, and Lifestyles instrument, and Gordon's Survey of Personal and Interpersonal Values are a few examples of organized, self-administered surveys that assess people's cultural values.