Culture, Branding, & Strategy

It was fun to do this exercise of selling new car brand in the USA, western Europe, and Japan & Korea. Also, it is a good example for me to understand how culture impacts consumer behavior and how to create strategic plan bases on cultural difference.

The first observation is the importance of creating a name of new brand. We spent more than 10 minutes on it. All of us believe the name of out brand must match up with cars' function and be international. We summarized all characteristics in our cars, such as: safety, advanced, tough, and so on. And we use translator to translate these characters in different languages, like Latin, Italian, and German. Finally we chose "MONTEM" as our new brand name, because it is a Latin word and it means mountain. We are selling utility cars (e.g. trucks and SUV) and mountain represents the function of our cars, also "MONTEM" shows international. I learnt a lot from the process of making the decision. I did not have any idea about the name because I thought it was the most difficult part. A good name can attract consumer's eyes. On the other hand, not only the name should easy for American to understand, but it also have same feeling in west Europe and Japan & Korea. I found the common senses in culture can achieve that. It is no doubt that mountain can represent outdoor activities and people need utility car in outdoor activities in the world. I really like MONTEM as our brand name, even I am a Chinese and I have different cultural background with Americans.

The second observation is how to analyze culture in marketing. When we generate our offerings and strategies, the first step was analyzing the difference of those three regions. I am a Asian and I lived in Italy more than three months. I understands the cultural differences in lifestyles, values, and attitudes. It formed different consumer behaviors of three regions. American loves truck,  but the roads in Japan & Korea and west Europe are narrow, truck does not work for people who live in these two regions. And I know the price of gasoline in  Japan & Korea and west Europe is much higher than America. Truck or big SUV is hard to occupy the market. Because of those cultural differences, the marketing plan should be separated into three parts. Then, we can choose promotion, price, product, and place to make a successful plan. Without understanding culture in international business, any marketing plan will fail.

After doing this activity, I found my own advantage is understanding the differences in culture. Ii is obvious that culture influences consumer behavior. I might find a job in American after graduate, I will pay more attention on culture, especial China and America,  because this is my advantage compare with American graduates.