Culture and Consumer Behaviour

Culture is the mental programming of people in a particular context. It consists of implicitly shared meanings among a group of people. McCracken (1986) defines two elements of culture as (a) Cultural categories: which are fundamental axes or lenses of meaning through which the individual divides and views the world. These categories can include distinctions of race, class, gender, etc; and (b) Cultural principles: which are the values and ideas that form the basis of the above categorization. 

Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, & Sanders (1990) developed a model to classify the levels of manifestation of culture. Figure 1 depicts the model.

Figure 1. Manifestation of Culture

Symbols are explicit words, gestures, pictures, objects that carry a specific meaning within a culture. Heroes are real or fictitious characters who personify prized characteristics in the culture. Rituals are activities conducted periodically which are socially essential within a culture. All these elements are explicit and can be observed in cultural practices. The deepest level of culture lies in values. Value can be defined as the answer to the question, “What is it that you want to live for? How do you want to live?” Hence, values are the end goals and preferred mode of action that people want to pursue.

McCracken (1986) also elucidates that cultural meanings are located in and transfer between three places namely, the culturally constituted world, the consumer good, and the individual consumer. Hence, in order to build cultural resonance, brands need to decode culture from the target society and encode culture in their brands through their products and advertisements.

Surf Excel: Redefining Cultural Principles

Cultural principles define cultural categories into valences and hierarchies. They decide what is good and what is bad. The detergent category conventionally follows the principle of ‘dirt is bad’, with all brands positioned on cleanliness and whiteness. Surf Excel redefined this cultural principle in order to break the clutter in the market and positioned itself on ‘dirt is good’.

Figure2. Surf Excel - Shifting Cultural Category by changing Cultural Principles

In Asia, dirt is culturally associated with negative aspects of poverty, poor hygiene, hardship, disease and sometimes death. In a case study written by Unilever and their advertising agency, Lowe (Gosling & Jathanna, 2012), they explain that they reversed the logic of making dirt ‘good’ from bad among moms by showing them the life values kids learn through dirt. Asian mothers cherish life values of  'forgiveness', 'sacrifice', 'gratitude', 'courage', 'determination' and want their child to inculcate these traditional values. Surf Excel, through its advertisements, showcased that, through dirt, a child can learn these values and have high gains. This helped Surf Excel become a symbol for freedom (Sachitanand, 2012). This campaign helped the brand's sales in Asia grow tenfold and become the No.1 brand in most Asian countries, with market share reaching as high as 70% (Gosling & Jathanna, 2012).

Fair & Lovely: Tapping the Values of Fairness

Fair & Lovely is the largest selling skin whitening cream in the world. It was launched by Unilever first in the Indian market. It held a leadership market share of 50-70% of the skin whitening market in India in 2006, with its close rivals Fairever and FairGlow only having a combined share of 16% (Karnani, 2007). Fair & Lovely was able to build resonance with Indian consumers because it decoded the culture of fairness at a deeper level of values and encoded the same in its brand communication.

Based on the cultural analysis done by Verma (2011), we can plot the manifestation of the Culture of Fairness of Hofstede’s model as follows:

Symbols	·         Hindi idioms 2 (‘kali kartutein’, ‘kala akshar..’ ‘Buri nazar wale..’ ‘kaali kaluti baigan looti’ ·         Moon related songs (lullaby and film songs) ‘chand see mehbooba ho..’ ·         Fairness eulogizing popular songs and folk songs
Heroes	·         Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Fair protagonist in movies
Rituals	·         Home treatments to protect fairness ·         Religious customs of worshipping ‘full moon’ (poornima, poonam) vs. amavasya, ·         Search for bride and bridegroom (matrimonial ads) Eg: "I am a 36-year-old man looking for an ideal Indian wife. She must be beautiful, fair skinned, well-mannered and respectful of my aging parents."
Values	·         Feminine beauty, perfection, racial superiority, confident, attractive ·         Better marital and job prospects, status

Fair & Lovely tapped into the deep values associated with fair skin and showcased the same in their advertisements. They initially positioned the fairness cream as an instrument to reach the end goal of better marital prospects. As the society changed towards increasing career consciousness among women, they moved to the end value of better job prospects and focused on the role of the product in helping the women realize their dream of becoming independent.

Clottaire Rapaille – Unlocking the Culture Code for Product Design

The deepest manifestation of culture lies in values. However, consumers may not be consciously aware of their own value systems that drive their behaviour and decisions. Most of the deepest held values are at sub-conscious level. Clottaire Rapaille is a psychologist who delves into the sub-conscious mind of consumers to uncover culture codes associated with product categories. In his book “The Culture Code” (Rapaille, 2006), he explains that the culture code can be decoded by analysing childhood imprints.

He presents an example of Wrangler Jeep, a player in the American SUV market. Jeep Wrangler was initially a big player, but later lost ground because of many new entrants in the SUV segment offering higher comfort and luxury. Chrysler, the manufacturer, was contemplating to redesign the Wrangler Jeep to make it more comfortable and luxurious. However, Rapaille’s research probed on the childhood imprints of “Jeep” among American consumers and found stories about free riding in open planes and symbols of the American West. He concluded that the Code for Jeep in America is HORSE. He recommended to design the product to symbolize a horse. A horse is not associated with comfort or luxury. It is associated with toughness and ruggedness. Hence, Jeep was designed with removal doors and an open top – to give the feeling of wind while riding, similar to riding a horse. They included tough leather like a saddle for the seats and made the headlights round in shape because horses have round eyes and not square ones.

The company also used a horse in its advertising and presented the Wrangler as a noble, nomadic hero that arrived serendipitously in perilous situations, resolved them thanklessly, and rode off quietly into the sunset. With the new product design, the sales of Jeep grew substantially along with establishment of Jeep fan clubs in America. These fan clubs also had t-shirts with the slogan “Real Jeeps have round headlights.” Recently, I-Phone cases with the Jeep theme are also being sold (See image). The brand has become a symbol for wildness and ruggedness and has strong resonance among its consumers.

Figure 4. I-phone case with Jeep theme

Figure 5. Recent T-shirt themes on Jeep

References:

Gosling, B., & Jathanna, R. (2012). OMO/Surf Excel/Rinso/Breeze: Dirt is good - The value of dirt. Warc Prize for Asian Strategy.

Hofstede, G., Neuijen, B., Ohayv, D. D., & Sanders, G. (1990). Measuring Organizational Cultures: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study Across Twenty Cases. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(2), 286. doi:10.2307/2393392

Karnani, A. G. (2007). Doing Well By Doing Good - Case Study: “Fair & Lovely” Whitening Cream (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. ID 958087). Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=958087

McCracken, G. (1986). Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods. Journal of Consumer Research, 13(1), 71–84.

Rapaille, C. (2006). The culture code : an ingenious way to understand why people around the world buy and live as they do / Clotaire Rapaille. New York : Broadway Books, c2006.

Sachitanand, R. (2012, August 8). How HUL succeeded in breaking through the clutter with “Surf Excel” campaign. The Economic Times.

Verma, H. V. (2011). Skin “Fairness”—Culturally Embedded Meaning and Branding Implications. Global Business Review, 12(2), 193–211. doi:10.1177/097215091101200202