Exploring cultural values - its implication on branding

Abstract

Values form an integral part of every culture. If we look at literature, we see that Schiffman and Kanuk (2004) define culture as the sum total of learned beliefs, values and customs that serve to direct the consumer behaviour of members in a particular society. Values are fewer in number and serve as a guide for culturally appropriate behaviour by a wide section of society. Values are enduring as they are not tied to anything specific. They continue to define core values as those which are i) adapted by a large number of people, ii) which are enduring and are followed by people for a long period of time and iii) which enable marketers to understand the behaviour of consumers. The main objective of the exercise is to identify the core set of values that Indian consumers identify with and analyze their present application in the marketing communication of various brands in 3 categories – tea, hair oil and fairness creams across two consumer classes – upper and middle. These categories are chosen due to their high relevance in the Indian cultural context. In the first part of the report, we have looked at values from various angles. We have looked at them from a Holistic society level discussing the concept of collectivism. We have discussed the influence of the family and the Reference groups. Given that our basic geography of work was India, we have looked at the concept of subcultures. At this point we also did a dip-stick analysis of some common values we identified as inherently Indian. However, given the influx of Western influences, especially on the younger generation, acculturation effects can not be negated. We looked at the core American values as defined by Schiffman and Kanuk and analyzed their applicability in the Indian context. We also looked at the core Indian Values and emblems as defined by S. Ramesh Kumar. (2006) In this case we looked at the marketing communication that was based on these aspects. Extensive literature survey was conducted at this stage in order to understand the ongoing research in the world of branding and culture. In the next stage, we looked at the demographics in India and identified our target segment. We decided to look at only two segments – urban upper and urban middle due to time and resource constraints. As already discussed earlier, we had identified three highly relevant categories to our study– tea, hair oil and facial creams. Appropriate industry analysis was conducted based on the requirements of the study and the communication patterns were studied. Based on our understanding till this stage, a set of 32 Core Indian Values were identified and a measurement scale was composed for each of these values. Each value has 5 points of measurement in its scale and 5 levels from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree. Thus a comprehensive questionnaire was formulated and administered to 384 respondents where they expressed their agreement or disagreement with the items in the scale for each value. The Sampling Population was defined in terms of elements, sampling units, extent and time. The element is urban upper and middle class individuals and the sampling unit would be households (since we use income and lifestyle at household level as a parameter). Extent is urban India as a whole (respondents can be from any geographical region) and time factor is period of survey. To identify our respondents we used Probability sampling technique and within it we chose the stratified random sampling method. We have been able to identify the dominant values to each class-category combination and also as a whole to the upper and middle class groups. To compute the dominant values, we used the inverse of the coefficient of variation i.e. •/• where higher the mean and lower the standard deviation implied a greater value for the variable and also better strength of the value assessed. We also consistently used ANOVA to see if there is any significant difference between means of different groups of people for the same set of values. Again, this was applied at multiple levels o At an aggregate level comparing all upper class and middle class respondents o At a category level, comparing between upper and middle class users of the same category o At each distinct group level of class-category combination Finally, a principal component analysis was also performed on the overall upper and middle class groups separately. We also looked at the advertisement communication of 2 to 3 major brands in each of the 6 sets that we had selected and identified the values from the set of 32 that had been used by the brands to communicate with the consumers. We found significant differences between the dominant values that emerged as a result of the survey and the values used in marketing communication. Also we have found differences in the dominant values across categories as well as classes of consumers. Our recommendations have been based on the gaps we identified in the present marketing communication of most brands in the three categories that we have studied.