Thu. Aug 29: Prep for Tuesday

Welcome!

Thanks for your patience with the logistics. We now have people assigned to groups, and there are four of them. The next two people coming in late (that is, who are new to class or who missed today, Aug 29) will join Europe/Russia, Americas.  The next person (if any) will join South / Central Asia.  That way we'll have balanced teams.

Here, you'll find a video to watch, a review of a key concept, some lexical items,  a task for your teams, and some preview of things moving forward (watch out: there's a reading assignment in that bit)..



As we recognized in class, we will discuss BtoB as well as BtoC marketing.  And that means we will not ignore fashion, music, food—those elements of culture that are most often found to vary quite a lot across national or regional "borders."  At left are some fashionistas in Turku (in Swedish, the town is Åbo: photo credit: abostreetstyle.blogspot.com). 


Watch This Video (9 minutes on language and Chinese rap)

Watch this.  Try to get some feedback from a Chinese native-speaker.  Putonghua (Mandarin) means "people's language" or "ordinary language." It is promoted as the "correct" or best or most efficient way for Chinese to speak, given the vast linguistic diversity in China.  What does this video say about the relative value of different languages?  Here are a list of things you might think about.  But what else comes to mind for you?  We'll work on this in class a little.

1. What are the main themes here?  Do you smell language divergence or convergence?
2. Does it make sense to talk about Chinese culture when it comes to rap?  
3. Does anything in the way people dress or act look similar to you? 
4. What are the local stereotypes or discourses about regional language difference?
5. What's different from your experience of watching/hearing rap or hiphop?
6. How can you market to one country with different languages within its borders?  
7. What surprised you, if anything?

Remember: we are not just talking about marketing widgets.  Marketing "culture" (that other kind of culture, like music, art, clothing, and food!) is a great place to work and live, you know.

Key Concept: Cultural Categories
We introduced the concept of cultural categories.  All humans categorize the natural and social world; we put things in chunks, or taxonomies.  A "desk" is not a "kitchen table" (or is it?).  A "chair" is not a "stool."  Both are kinds of something:  what?  Furniture.  Cultures chop of the world of experience, the world of objects and services, the world of markets, into different chunks.

What chunks matter to marketers?  Perhaps we have to know what chunks of the world marketers most often use, first.  How do marketers carve up the significant categories of human experience?  I've started with gender, age, city, region, and nation.  What else should be there

You all have some marketing background.  You know the "culture" of marketing.  We can, as we go forward, explore what chunks—the cultural categories—that are most salient (meaningful or important) in YOUR cities.  How are "households" or "families" categorized?  We'll make a list; we'll try to be systematic, and we'll include those meaningful "chunks" in the reports you make tot he group.

From the Lexicon
Epistemology (how you know what you know); diacritics (a fancy word for "accent marks" that are needed to correctly pronounce things in most non-English languages); LGBT (lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered) [categories of identity —are they global categories or not?] SKU : stock-keeping unit). Reciprocity:  when exchange is informal (not mediated by money or cash) and when exchange is usually balanced between two people or two groups, then you have balanced reciprocity. Demography: the study of statistics such as births, deaths, income, or the incidence of disease, which illustrate the changing structure of human populations.

Your Task over the Long Weekend
Connect with your regional team-mates.  Get their emails, their textable mobile phone numbers, their QQ addresses (and if you don't know what that is, you soon will) or their WeChat or their SKYPE (you have to figure out what works best).  

• Learn what countries are in your region (I don't mean "real" regions, I mean your team members).
• Learn who represents what countries.
• Check on Facebook or ORKUT (you will learn what ORKUT is!) or LinkedIn or some social network site to find common names from that country.  If your country does not have much in the way of social networking (and I'd love to know where the heck THAT is), then you have to snoop around.

Be Ready To Report:
By next class, please be ready to report the following things about your group:
1. Rank your countries in population order.
2. Rank your countries in income order.
3. Discover one "surprising" or fun-fact about each of your countries.
Each group will have just a couple minutes to present.  It would be nice if someone has a three-page PowerPoint covering those three points!

We will use about five minutes of class time to allow you to catch up and do this, as I suspect not everyone will be able to reach everyone else.

Be Ready to Discuss:
Agar.  That's the Culture article.  Its not an easy read in some ways, because there is so much there.  We'll break it down in class.

Moving Forward: 
The Nestlé case is our first case.  Its on the syllabus for Tuesday.  We will cover both Nestlé and Krupps on THURSDAY, so be ready to discuss both.

Which Reminds Me. . . Future Food and Music and Sport Fun
I would appreciate opening each class with some music from one of your countries.  I hope that one of the teams will bring a short music segment we can use as we transition from one thing to another during class.

Thanks for reading!  See you Tuesday.

Introducing Culture & Global Marketing: And How To Get Ready for Tuesday Aug. 27

Get Ready for Tuesday:
We'll explore how we are going to divide the class into regional teams.  We'll take a look at some global statistics, and review—with your involvement—what the "hottest" markets are, and why we may want to include some "cooler" markets (cool in several senses of the word).  You'll start working in your teams, and get to know the strengths of your team members.

We'll make sure everyone understands course expectations.  Your syllabus is here.

And we'll begin a discussion of what international marketing is about, and touch on some key themes that will come up again and again in our discussions in this course.

We'll discuss two articles: Agar on Culture, and Douglas & Wind's article on The Myth of Globalization.  These are clickable links! 

What's Going On With Culture?
There are many ways of looking at and thinking about culture.  They depend on the perspective you take, your disciplinary inclinations, and your interests.  What, in fact, do you want to DO with the concept of culture?

When you cross "cultural boundaries," however you define them, you have to make some kind of translation.  You may have to understand someone else's point(s) of view in new ways.  If you make and sell products across cultural boundaries, you have to have your eyes and ears and mind attuned to the possibility that your understanding of someone else's needs, wants, desires, (or grocery store or supply chain or regulatory environment) may be very different from the one you know and understand.

In this course, we'll explore some of the cultural models that have guided International marketing.   We'll touch of Hofstede's cultural dimensions, on cultural analysis of the kind that anthropologist Dr. Mary Douglas uses to understand organizations and so-called consumers.  As an introduction to some of the problems and prospects in using the Culture Concept in marketing, here's an article that lays out the problems in a pretty clear way.  We'll discuss and refer to this article and the concepts here often.

Pay special attention to the idea of "rich point."  Understand what Agar is talking about when he talks about ethnography.  Take note of the examples he uses: especially take note of the "thought experiment" he uses to illustrate his points.  Can you sort out the "traditional" view of culture, and some of the problems there?  Can you see the value of linking language and culture?  Be ready to talk about this article when we next meet.

What's Going On With Globalization?
The second required reading for Tuesday is this article.  Take a look: its a classic.  In fact, you may wish to think about some products that are marketed in the USA from overseas companies. Do you think they are the same products that are marketed elsewhere? (Check of Chupa Chups, Epson Printers, and Toblerone, for example, and think of some others).

What do you think of the standardization philosophy? When can it work?  Aren't some products pretty standard all over the world?

If standardization does not work, can you explain to me why the television series "Friends" is so amazingly popular in DVD boxed-sets in China? And, what do you think of Agar's speculation that any two teenagers from any two countries anywhere in the world have more in common with one another than their parents have with one another.  Do you think it is true, or not, and why?

Be ready to talk about this article, too.

Welcome to IBUS 402

Welcome!
This is me (since you won't see me on the first day!)

As you may know, a death in the family has delayed my arrival in class by one course meeting. But your syllabus is ready, and this blog is ready to help guide you through the course.

Watch this space for course updates, for links to important articles or online videos (links are in the links panel to the right and in the text), and for comments from your colleagues in class.

Note that I will not use Blackboard in this class.  Blackboard is useful, but kludgy.  I find this an easier way to communicate virtually with students, and for students to provide feedback to me and to one another.

Readings for Tuesday
Agar and Douglas & Wind.  (Those are clickable links, there).  Please download and be ready to discuss these on Tuesday.  You should also glance at Chapter I in Keegan (yes, I know it may not yet be in the bookstore: if not, I'll provide some back-up material in class until it arrives).  Agar may not be in your course packet.

From time to time, you may wish to know how you are doing, grade-wise, in this class. Blackboard allows you to do this without speaking with or interacting directly with your professor.  I think that is not a good idea.  If you want to know how you are doing, if you are worried about or especially happy about your grade, come see me.

Office Location & Office Hours
Close Hipp 577.  For this class, Tuesday 10:00 am to 11am and by appointment.  If I'm not in conference or writing, the door will be open.  Feel free to shoot me a text on my mobile phone any time, or drop me an email: ken.erickson@moore.sc.edu.  My mobile number appears in the syllabus, but you have to look for it (I'd rather not publish it right here in the blog, for obvious reasons).