In this section I want to focus on characteristics of
India which are essential to understand the country's market needs. Starting
with historical, geographical and political facts, I want to end discussing
some aspects of India's culture and thereby especially concentrate on factors
relevant to local advertising in India.
Precedingly, I want to line out some of the most
important historical events for India which I consider to be important to
understand India today. According to the BBC website, "India has been home
to several ancient civilizations and empires, some dating back to more than
2,000 BC. Culture and religions have flourished over the millennia, and foreign
influence has ebbed and flowed." The most formative event of today’s India
was the British rule from 1858 to 1947. The British have brought many things to
the country, such as their language and other cultural traditions. After the
British had left, the country parted into mainly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan.
This partition also resulted in wars over the Kashmir area between India and
Pakistan.
This directly connects to geographical facts about India. India is the seventh largest country in the world and is divided into 28 federal states. The capital is New Delhi but the largest city is Mumbai (formerly Bombay).
Map
of India:
"The Republic of India is the world's largest
democracy" (BBC) and is very much concerned with building up
infrastructure and keeping up with Western states in economic matters. Although
there is a flourishing and growing middle class, great parts of the rural
population remain impoverished.
India has more than 20 official languages but the most
commonly spoken languages are English, which the British brought over, and
Hindu. The same diversity can be found in religion. According to the BBC,
" Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism" are the major
religions to be found in the country.
Although India is on a good way from tradition to
modernity, traditional patterns are still prevalent. One example of this is the
ancient caste system. It is against law to classify and treat people as
belonging to a certain caste. In reality, however, this is still done very
often and so the country still clings to traditional patterns there.
India has a flourishing and modern Media system. The
most commonly known industry is the highly successful Bollywood film industry.
In many parts of the country, the media system (covering print, radio,
television, and internet access) is fully developed.
To conclude the cultural facts about India, I want to
stress the enormous diversity within this large country and its ongoing move
from tradition to modernity.
Now I want to outline some cultural characteristics of
Indian society which have implications on the marketing strategies applied in
this market.
Indian culture is regarded high-context. This has implications on the communication style advertisers should use to sell their products. In high-context cultures people prefer a more abstract, implicit and indirect style as the dependence on the context is very high. There is a large amount of shared values and understanding within their group so much information needs not to be uttered explicitly but is directly drawn from the context (Mueller 136).
This is why there is a preference for a soft-sell
approach in India. Indian people base their purchase decisions on metaphorical
and indirect messages instead of factual and direct ones.
Indian culture can be analyzed with Hofstede’s
dimensions of culture. I want to pick out three which I am going to use for my
comparison of advertising strategies.
The first dimension I want to outline is individualism
vs. collectivism. On the continuum between these two ends, India ranks more
towards the collectivist end of it. For advertisers this means that advertising
concentrating only on the individual might not work well. Instead, in order to
produce a persuasive message, they should focus on the advantages of the
product for the group. Only focusing on one person in advertising would
strengthen the individual traits of the product and subsequently might be
assigned to the customer. Being an individualist has the implications of being
egoistic and thus offends the norms in this culture.
The second dimension I want to discuss is masculinity
vs. femininity. On the score of the masculinity continuum, India ranks just
slightly above the boundary to being a masculine country. This means that
“achievement, assertiveness, dominance, success, competition, and heroism”
(Mueller 139) are important in this culture but that there is also a focus on
“relationships, modesty, caring for the weak and quality of life” (Mueller
139), so typical feminine characteristics. However, there is a clear tendency
to value masculine traits in Indian society.
The last point I want to mention is Indian society’s
long-term orientation. As opposed to short-term oriented cultures, long-term
oriented cultures place great value on traditions and do not accept value
change easily. India’s long-term orientation is connected to their ancient
history which still plays a big role in today’s India.
Sources:
An, Daechun.
Advertising visuals in global brands' local websites: a six-country comparison.
Korea: Hongik University, 2007. Print.
Mueller, Barbara.
Dynamics of International Advertising. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2011.
Print. Early, Christopher. Cultural Intelligence: Individual Interactions
Across Cultures. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Print.
http://booksite.mkp.com/barnum/testingessentials/pdfs/06_Going_Local_in_India.pdf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12557384
http://www.facts-about-india.com/Geography-facts-about-india.php
http://geert-hofstede.com/india.html
