Thu. Sept 19 Blogpost

For Weekend Viewing (and extra credit)

I hope our African, Latin American, and South Asian colleagues can identify a film for us to enjoy.  Meanwhile, here is one of my favorites.  There is a trailer on YouTube; the film is called "Getting Home." I can not upload it here, for some reason, but you can check for it if you like. 

I found a link: click here.  (The image at left is not a link). Try to spend an hour with it.  (After it loads, wait a moment or two for the game-advertisment to go away:it should work okay on a high-speed connection—yes, this has clear subtitles).  Look for cultural values  Look at what people consume—food, drink, and funerals in particular.  What about this movie surprises you?

There will be an extra credit question on the quiz about this film!

Forthcoming

Tuesday we'll continue with our quiz, going over the text material as in the post below (from Tuesday).

We'll also walk through expectations for your upcoming presentation.  Note that you should be prepared to have a one-page handout for the class, and it should contain more than what is in your PowerPoint!

To give you a hand in getting the research done for this, 30 to 40 minutes of class-time is allocated to library research time, with an international business research librarian providing you with some useful tools.  Class will meet in Spring Library  NEXT Thursday, 26th Sept. The second half of class will be dedicated to your working in teams, discovering which cities you want to highlight (per the instructions given below, and on the syllabus) and generally working on your presentations.

Quiz Review

To speed things along, here is a preview of what the rest of the quiz contains.

Question one is about competitive advantage. Be able to identify a company and/or product with a product, price, advertising, or POS competitive advantage.

Question two was covered in class: we identified three global trends and set out their implications.  The trends were 1. aging population 2. global resource limitations/climate change and 3. state-controlled markets in the ascendancy.   You identified some implications.  Note that if you were not in class, you should be ready to complete this section on Tuesday.  An implication is NOT a restatement of the trend, and saying "be aware of the trend" is not an implication.  I'm looking for what a marketer should do.  For example, item two might suggest something about sourcing, price fluctuations due to instability, and a need to message about sustainability as consumers may be  more concerned and aware of the carbon-footprint of your business.  

Question three asks you to specify several low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and upper income countries.

Question four asks if income is a good "independent variable" against which to test or measure marketing outcomes.

Question five asks what the etic point of view is, and what the emic point of view is.

With all that in mind, we can finish the quiz quickly and move on to a further discussion of cultural models and tools for comparing cultural patterns, as discussed in chapter 3 of di Mooij.

Reading

Please be ready to discuss Chapter 3 in di Mooij.  

Tuesday Sept. 17 Blog

What's In This Blog
First, a little fun about Boeing, which we previewed in class. Take a look. Next, usual, you'll find some lexicon (below), then a set of reading expectations for Thursday.  Set aside several hours: you need to read through the material in Keegan, Chapters 1 - 4.  The handy guide below tells you what you are expected to know the most about, but you should review all of Chapters 1 - 4.  Please read only the short elements of Chapter 1 in di Mooij shown below, and the short bit in Chapter 2, but read all of Chapter 3.   

Preview of Boeing "case"

Thanks for attending to my comments about Boeing.  Note that Boeing is facing increased competition in addition to serious supply-chain-related problems with its new Dreamliner. 

As I mentioned, before JAL recovered (and recovered fast and strong) from bankruptcy, they asked The Boeing Company for help with a re-design.  Here is a preview.  Watch and enjoy. 

Lexicon
Brand image
Clients vs. Consumers
Brand-map
Ethnographers
Positioning
Brand Equity

Expectations for Thursday
I'm revising our syllabus a bit to fit the needs of the class, as you know. 

Report two will happen next week, two groups on Tuesday the 24th, two groups on Thursday the 26th.  In return for pushing this back a bit, you agreed to get us caught up on readings

Readings (and here we play catch up and move ahead) will be: `

Keegan Chapters one through Four.  
There is a lot of information there.  I will provide a summary, 30 minute lecture to highlight the main points, introduce one ADDITIONAL analytical approach to culture, and then we'll  will enjoy a quiz.  

Please be especially aware of these sections in Keegan.  I expect you'll know what else is in Keegan, but we will especially touch on the issues below (numbers below are page numbers:
•  The three principles of marketing, especially the value equation (6)
•  The standardization debate (8)
•  Nokia's "misreading the market" (Box 1-1 p. 24)
•  Economic shift from "West" to "East" (40)
•  Aging population and  implications (41)
•  Stages of Market Development (49-56)
•  Kinds of economic cooperation (69-70)
•  Introducing political, legal, and regulatory frameworks (75)
•  Expropriation (80).
•  Intellectual property and trademark (84-85)
•  Analytical approaches to cultural factors (111)
•  Living, working, and thriving in other cultures (123)

di Mooij Readings for Chapter 1, 2 and  3.
• Read A Model of Cross-Cultural Consumer Behavior & Organization of the Book (22-23)
• In Chapter 2, read Comparing Cultures (33-36)
• Read ALL of Chapter 3.  Be ready to talk about explaining variables in "consumer behavior"

A Question to Consider: Who is a consumer, and what is consumption?
One of your colleagues from raised this

Expectations for Second Presentation:
You will pick only four countries (or regions) to complete the task set out in the syllabus, to wit:

Daily life, income, gender, age, psychographics and other segmentations.

o Here, you’ll give an overview of differences, then select one national or regional setting for
intensive focus. This region will be the focus in your third report. 

I expect to see a first slide identifying the four countries you will choose, repeating the basic demographics and ADDING their current leader's name and political ideology/party.

I expect to see a second slide introducing  gender variation in the four selected countries (this can be up to four slides long).  Your gender variation should include marketing implications

I expect to see a third slide about psychographics, "taste" differences, or other dimensions of difference that may make a difference (e.g. developmental or age groups, religious differences, major economic groupings, or other broadly significant "segmentations.). This can be one slide or up to four.

Your last slide selects one of these four or some other location that your group chooses within your region but among your allocated cities which will be the focus of your upcoming third report.  You must provide some new information, something dramatic, different, interesting, or problematic about your selected city and country that justifies your interest in it. Tell us why you picked this place (and, "plenty of Internet resources about is" is not the very best reason--tell us something about the place that matters!)

Locations for your second report:
Africa, please consider using "Bedouins" as one of your groups instead of Egypt; you'll also do a West, East, and South African location. 

Europe/Latin America will use Italy (step it up, Italy); Malmö, Dominican Republic,and. . .was it a place in Mexico or Bolivia? You decide.

China will do China as one "region" and speak in generalities when that matters (but be ready to talk about local difference!).  You will also do Japan (again, pay attention to locality as well as nationality).  I believe you selected Vietnam as a third region (its growing so rapidly!). You know your other  location: you decide.

Central/South Asia: India is certainly a location—locality is important, here.  Kazakastan is another (I think).  You may have chosen Pakistan, too.  You decide your other location.

Preview of Boeing "case"
Thanks for attending to my comments about Boeing.  Note that Boeing is facing increased competition in addition to serious supply-chain-related problems with its new Dreamliner.  As I mentioned, before JAL recovered (and recovered fast and strong) from bankruptcy, they asked The Boeing Company for help with a re-design.  Here is a preview.  Watch and enjoy.  

Sept 12, 2013 Blog

Lexicon and Review
But not in that order.  First, review.  Then, Lexicon, Then, your assignment: your groups should be ready to discuss the Krups case.  Details follow.

Lexicon: 
lingua franca（Swahili is one of these). A language, often for trade, that crosses language groups
WeChat.  Look on Wikipedia to learn about this amazing application.  Try it out.
QQ.  Owned by Tencent Software, the most popular IM program in the world. Try it out.
Reciprocity.  This, we learned, is critical in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
Aymara.  This is one of the major languages of the Andean region, which should be spoken by the president of Boliva, Evo Morales (if I don't miss my Andean guess, however, I think he actually is of Aymara descent but does not speak much Aymara).

Review:
You can review the Jeopardy quiz here.  The midterm will be made up of items that will include just about everything you see in this jeopardy game.  You should be able to click through and view the answers and questions.  [If you click on the blue jeopardy image here it won't click through, so use the link up above to review the game: please don't make any edits!]

Fun note for Latin America:  El Chiguierre Bipolar, a group of satirists and animators in Venezuela, have produced a wonderful series about all the national leaders of South (and North) America, in which they are all stranded on a desert island.  The cartoon is in Spanish, but if you take a look, see if you can identify who these leaders are, and what some of the stereotypes are about their individual countries (and the personalities of these leaders!).

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npUI1vOA_fI

Krups

The four groups will have five minutes to discuss THREE aspects of the KRUPS case.  Be ready to talk about:

1. The brand positioning of the KRUPS product line prior to E. German (DDR) market entry.

2. The distribution model used by Krups and its relationship to its "brand equity."

3. The multiple options faced by Krups, and YOUR TEAM'S recommendation.

If you have had a chance to view any of the videos in the prior blog, these will help you understand the DDR context.  Enjoy!

Tue Sept 10 Blog

What's In Here
First, a little lexicon and some review, including a word-cloud of the comments from the class on those first two presentations.  (Word clouds are useful and I tried a new cloud-generator, see below).  And, a few additional resources that I hope you'll look into for the discussion tomorrow on the Krups case!

Lexicon and Review
For the lexicon, these terms (and a bibliographic suggestion) came up.  
•  ORKUT (a social networking tool very popular in Brazil and India. . .but why?)
•  DIGLOSSIA (in which one language is spoken at home, and another at work & school)
•  TASTE & DISTINCTION (These terms are linked in the work of sociologist Bourdieu).
    Knowing local tastes is critical; for Bourdieu, taste shows class & individual identity and it 
    is not just about income.
•  RUSS BELK Is an academic in the marketing world who uses Bourdieu's (and other)
    ideas.

The presentations were a great first effort, and within the tight time and page limits, quite a good job.  

The comments from yoru colleagues were interesting. Here is a wordcloud of the comments (from tagxedo.com  a good resource to represent free-listing data).  

So, don't be afraid to add a slide or two to each slide section if you can move quickly.  Some especially interesting comments were those that were not repeated (outliers are always interesting!):  nice to have more time to do this research (so true), nice to not speak from notes (tough to do but often a good idea) were two of those.

It is really difficult to draw clear marketing implications from historical tidbits but you did a good job with that, too.  I've used the scores provided by your colleagues to work out a score: and both groups did quite well.

Krups Case Information
Here is an article about recent efforts and problems in marketing to former "Eastern Block" countries—in this case it is Hungary but you'll get the idea.  The article is also downloadable in the e-course pack at right (Marx To Trademarks).  It will set the Krups experience in a more current context than the 1990s.

But how much do you know about life in so-called Eastern Europe? (By the way, Austria, Slovenia, and E. Germany really are "Central Europe," don't you think?)  Here are a couple YouTube links. The first is a long one, from the BBC.  Worth a watch.

The second piece is from the economist.  Its shorter, and different.

Its interesting to look at the differences between these two representations of life in E. Germany prior to reunification.  The BBC piece uses local footage and emphasizes daily life from the E. German POV (point of view).  The Economist piece is an outsider, a German journalist, looking in.  Can you spot the differences in perspective?  Look at how value judgements creep in.  Do you think life was uniformly grey in E. Germany?  Certainly it was not a place for a lot of open discussion of E. German problems and politics (the spy agency made the NSA look, well, maybe I shouldn't go there just now since the NSA is much bigger and spy-ier than we may have thought but you get my point).  Anyhow, look at the contrast. 

If you have time to listen to the whole of the BBC documentary, you'll appreciate it. Get some popcorn.  It takes an hour to watch (I aim to get through it).

Be ready to think like a Krups marketer.  Look at the questions in the syllabus.  What should Krups do? What's the main marketing problem, here?

You'll be expected to have seen at least the first 1/3 of the longer documentary: be ready for some quizz time in the coming class meetings!

Thu Sept 5 Blog—And Also: Instructions for that First Presentation

Four Things to Look For in Today's Blog
First, a summary about Nestlé and thoughts (mainly to help me help you!) about how to frame up our "solution" to a business case.  Second, (and this is pending) what your expectations are for your first country report.  Third, some additional information about international marketing of breast-feeding related products (not Nestlé, but Pigeon, which we mentioned in class).  Last, some Lexicon from today, including a correction for a misstatement I made about Gladwells distinction between puzzles and something else: that something else is a mystery (see below).  And remember: there will be a short quiz next week so review your lexicon.

Thanks for Nestlé Thinking
I really appreciate your helping work through that Nestlé case. I had some wonderful feedback about how to make these cases more effective in the future—and I value your thoughts.  As an anthropologist (and I share this with any business executive worth her salt), I tend to look for the big picture.  So it was great to see and hear your comments that we need to attend to everything from how we communicate, through the nature of the product that is sold (should it come with a bottle of water or what?), to the supply chain (who should be the point of contact for the consumer)?  We explored, briefly, what a "third world" country might mean (and we learned we needed to be careful with such glib characterizations, for sure).

One big, and I think helpful, bit of feedback: as we "solve" the case, I need to remember that we can not be quite as comprehensive as we might be if we were in a full-on business case competition.  My job here is to focus on the marketing implications: what should the marketer do?  Having said that, considering the other aspects—finance, distribution, product design and so on—are still important and we won't miss them.  But they should be footnoted.  Noted, but at the foot.  The basic task as we work through a case is to determine "what should the marketer do?"

So: for the Krups case, consider especially what the marketer should do in moving Krups products into East Germany.  Each of your groups can come up with a response: what should the marketer do?  Lets go with that as our lead-off for next week. 

(See below for some more information from our work on women's breast feeding products in Mexico, that informal "Pigeon" company I mentioned.  There is a video from the company explaining how they do their R&D.  Take a look.  What does it say to you as a US-based consumer?  What are they trying to convey in this video?  Take a look through the site and you'll see there is some high-concept design, here, and that CSR (corporate social responsibility) is foregrounded on their Japanese website (you'll see those initials pop out at you even if you don't read Japanese!)  

Watch This Space: Here Are Your Report Instructions
I'm going to blast an email to you to highlight this.  Read with care.  Text me with questions!  310 403 521 (note: I will try my best to get back to you within the hour if you text me before 5pm: texts after 5pm or on weekends and I get 12 hours to respond— I'll try to be quicker but no promises).  These instructions are downloadable so you can look print them out and refer to them (see the electronic course pack at right).

First Team Report Instructions: 

TASK: someone has to build the PowerPoint.  You can share this task.  You have to get with your teammates to gather as much of this as you can.  It is likely that one or more team members will be sick, or unable to help for one reason or another.  Move ahead without them.  At least, find out what their city and country names are.  Try to fill in as much as you can.

You will have ten minutes to present a five-page PowerPoint.  That means two minutes talking per slide.  Your classmates will provide feedback using a simple feedback form that I'll provide in class. Two groups will present on Thursday AFTER we talk for 30 minutes about KRUPS.

I want one person to present each slide.  One person for side one, one for slide two, one for slide three, one for slide four.  Choose your strongest speakers who can present quickly and effectively.

OUTLINE FOR YOUR SLIDES (Use these for your slide titles, please)

1.  Map Of Our Region.

2.  Demography & Economics

3.  Language(s)

4.  History & Some Marketing Implications

5.  How We Learned What We Learned

FIRST SLIDE: MAP YOUR REGION

Provide a map showing where your countries are (you may just wish to use a single map and point out your countries: if you can do so, highlight them!).

SECOND SLIDE:  DEMOGRAPHY & ECONOMICS

Here you list the Cities and Countries in your region, like this (guess what: Wikipedia is not bad for some of this!)

City Country Population GDP per-capita GDP      Global GDP Rank

1. City Name  Country Name country  population GDP per-cap                 Global GDP Rank

2. 

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

[you'll have up to 11 or so lines on this slide! A lot of info! If something is missing, we'll know who needs to fill in some data: your job is to get your team to provide the info you need.

Third Slide:  

THIRD SLIDE: LANGUAGE(S)

Show the languages in your area.  Be able to talk quickly about how easy it is for people to communicate across national borders.  And, how about WITHIN national borders?  If any country has special language issues within the country, be ready to talk about it (voice over: it does not need to be in the slide).

FOURTH SLIDE: HISTORY AND SOME MARKETING IMPLICATIONS

You have to select ONE country (or, if it makes more sense, one City if your country is very complex) and give us three or four key bullet points about the history of that city or country.  These historical facts should have relevance for marketers.  For example, the history of Vietnam includes colonization by the French.  This results in a unique food culture.  The history of China includes the use of a single writing system across many languages: this has implications for packaging.  So, this slide should be in two columns.  AT LEAST one of these bullets should touch on the history/nature of tender relations or norms.  AT LEAST one of these bullets should touch on the history/nature of generational norms (younger people's historical position or older peoples position, or married versus single. . .).  Does that make sense?

FOR EXAMPLE: FOR VIETNAM

[By the way: these may be tricky to uncover: so how you pick the city/country for this slide will be critical!)

PAGE FIVE: HOW WE LEARNED WHAT WE LEARNED

Show us your sources (bullet points are fine).

Show us what you did not or could not find out, or what you may want to know more about.

More About Pigeon
Here is a link to a R&D message about Pigeon's approach to breast feeding products.  Browse through it, and if you can, watch the video.

[the link is http://www.pigeon.com/interview/interview03.html in case the click through is not working, above: sometimes those link-points are hard to see/use.]

The issues of women's awareness about formula vs. breast feeding were important to Pigeon because they market products to help women store and use breast milk.  They have to teach them how long you can store breast milk in the fridge; they have to know where to start with eductation programs in Mexico: What do women already know about using breast milk?  In short, Pigoen's marketers need to understand "what is going on, now" with women in Mexico (that was YOUR question today for Nestlé: what are women doing NOW for feeding infants? A good question!).

Here are three slides that summarized a few things for Pigeon.

Lexicon Items from Sept 15.
Discourse: what people SAY about something.  Like national culture, for example.  There is a common "discourse" about what it means to be polite in New York vs. what it means to be polite in South Carolina.  Discourse is important: it is what people say.  However, it may not match what people actually do.
Practice (or practices): what people actually do.  We could say "behavior" but in this case I mean what people do as opposed to what they might say.  We can observe practices.  We can listen for discourse.  Does the discourse match the practice?  For example, if people say "People in New York are always in a hurry," does that match with their practices?  For marketers the distinction is important because people may tell you one thing (give you the "discourse" about how a product is used or understood or purchased) but their actual practices may be different.  So you need information both about what people SAY (discourse) and what they DO (practice).  
Mystery and Puzzle: by Malcolm Gladwell the author of "Tipping Point" and several other business and marketing relevant books.  He has popularized the idea that some problems are not just puzzles, but are mysteries.  You can solve a puzzle, maybe, but am mystery requires more time, more context, more information to unpack and "solve." 
Why is our soft drink company  loosing market share?  What can we do to win the market back?  The first question is a puzzle: it can be solved. The second problem can not be solved by information alone.  It requires a spark of creativity, a leap of faith, some intuition, some marketing imagination.  That's what Gladwell calls a mystery: mysteries are not solved by empirical data: they may be approached only with a spark of human creativity.  

(In class I did not quite get that distinction right: now I've corrected the record!).

Culture(s) and culture concepts for International Marketing

Some Review
Today, we worked through some of the language and cultural diversity of China as seen in the making and marketing of rap music.  You all noticed some things that were new to many of you: the fact that rap—as a melodic/rhythmic form—is on the one hand universal and on the other tightly bound to local languages (in some cases) or offered through the lingua franca of Mandarin.

Its hard to know, unless you know Mandarin (or Cantonese or Yunnan-hoa, Yunnan "language" or dialect). . .but what about the content of the music?  Are these rappers saying the same thing?

Ask in your team.  Do you have someone who speaks Chinese on your team?  Find out.

As for Agar, he's struggling with the culture concept.  You'd think the anthropologists would have this all worked out. But they don't.  This is because (Agar might say), culture is a relational concept.

We didn't get all the way through this article today, so we'll spend 15 minutes on it on Thursday.  The big questions for me are still about convergence and divergence: when are cultures (behaviors? practices? meanings? shopping? what?) the same or different?  What is universal?

We talked about what it means to be "polite," and wondered if people from New York are rude, or just in a hurry.  We talked about the "rural howdy wave," and I found out that this is an Australian rural thing, not just an American rural thing.  Check this out if you like:
http://thegreynomads.com.au/lifestyle/featured-articles/wave-of-approval-for-rural-roads-ritual/

This image (from the Australian website, below) was called the "phatic finger." The idea of "phatic communication" comes from asking what, exactly, is communicated when someone says "how are you?" and the answer is "fine."  What's really communicated?  Maybe the respondent had a horrid day.  But the ritual greeting does communicate something.  What?  If it is "phatic" it signals "I'm a nice person, I care enough to ask, I've followed the ritual." This is purely social information.  Lots of interaction is like this.  Phatic.

Y'all suggested some interesting universals.  Agar touches on universals,  but doesn't go very far with the idea: that one way of looking at "culture" is to see it as those things that are uniquely human, shared by all humans.  The culture stuff is part of what makes us different from our animal cousins.  And its both those universals and the local peculiarities that become quite interesting for marketers.  Some anthropologist once said that the key question for anyone interested in studying what humans do is this one: "Is it the same, or is it different?"  That basic analytic task is shared by all sciences, in fact.  And by careful marketers, IMHO.

Some Lexical Items

Watch out: there may be a sort of a quiz about these:
•  Rich point
•  Ethnography
•  Empirical
•  Ethnocentrism
•  Methodological vs. Moral Relativism
•  Culture
•  Context
•  Participant Observation
and our old friends, • Convergence vs. Divergence in marketing

That's going to wrap up the anthropological kick-start to our international experience.

Watch this space for instructions on how to complete your FIRST TEAM REPORT. Its coming up soon.  If you have not met outside of class, you need to start thinking about how to do this.  Do you have your team-members' email or mobile phone numbers?  Think about it!