Culture and trend

In this presentation, culture brings great impact on every consumer behavior. Consumers have their response through their own cultural background and past experience. Culture is defined as the sum total of learned beliefs, values and customs that serve to direct the consumer behavior of members of a particular society (Schiffman et al., 2008, pp.356). Trend is defined as the upwaves will be longer than the countermoves and will move with more momentum (Link 2003, p.96). With advanced telecommunication technology development, globalization has become much more realistic than before. However, localization as the act of adapting to their own culture to define exotic products or services, plays an important role in promoting mobile phones in foreign markets.

Culture influences on consumer behavior in two aspects such as personality traits and subjective culture (Schiffman et al., 2008, pp. 358). Those two aspects lead to the development of cognitive beliefs, practices and values directing to attitude and social forms. Finally, behavior is conducted by the intention of customers. Regarding enculturation and acculturation, it is the process of learning one’s own culture or other new foreign culture (Schiffman et al., 2008, pp360).

Nokia understands the change of teenagers’ habits and customs through the social network, to redefine the value of the mobile phones in Taiwan (“Nokia”, 2009). So it provides daily life service locally depending on different areas or countries. First, traditional Mid-Moon festival affects Nokia Company to create Nokia moon cakes in order to attract young and elder local Taiwanese consumers’ attention (“Nokia, 2009). Secondly, Saudi Arabia market is another typical example. Nokia adjusts language control interface to cater Arabian consumers. It also offers complimentary service for Ramadan event to remind the time of pray by the use of Nokia internet every day (“Nokia”, 2009). As for Australian market, Nokia provides daily service for local residents including exclusive rugby action available everywhere, map location service, all varieties of music downloading and 30 channels watching for different ages (“Nokia”, 2009).

From the above example, any multicultural companies need to understand the local culture and customs in order to meet their global marketing strategy. Culture and trend analysis has been applied successfully by Nokia, as it adopts localization strategy to satisfy the local’s consumption.