Analysis of Cultural Differences and Their Effects on Marketing Products in the United States of America and Germany

Companies that do not adapt to the new global realities will become victims of those that do. §In this quote Theodor Levitt, a former professor at the Harvard Business School, points out that companies all over the world need to deal with a process which has changed the way they carry on a business in many ways. The process, namely globalisation, takes advantages as well as disadvantages, not only for the business world but also for the individual. The importance to face globalisation has always been there but, it has increased with the evolving stages of globalisation. Ever since this process started, companies have tried to derive advantage from globalisation while at the same time they had to deal with the disadvantages. §For marketers in particular, this process seems to offer a lot of potential for the exploration of new markets and customers. However, the questions determining the success or failure of a marketing campaign are more complex than in domestic marketing. Accordingly, the terms international and global marketing are strongly connected to globalisation, and have become a key factor for the success of companies. Corporations that want belong to these successful multi-national companies (MNC), or global players certainly have to deal with the different issues that come along with marketing products in other countries. These can have a significant impact on international operations but also on the overall performance of a company.§Since a company s approach to these issues determines the success or failure in marketing a product abroad, these situations have to be addressed at an early stage. Among others, cultural differences are one of the major obstacles that have to be considered in international marketing. Every culture has its own individual values, behaviours, ways of thinking, lifestyle and language which make it unique. Accordingly, companies have two different possibilities to deal with that process. At first, standardisation, an identical marketing plan is used across different cultures, and secondly, adaptation, appropriate adjustments are made to the special cultural environment of the target market. It is therefore important for a marketer to be aware of these differences, and to use the right tools to advertise products successfully in multiple, varied cultural environments. §This study provides a comprehensive framework of cultural differences in the USA and Germany, and analyses how companies should conceive their marketing efforts in terms of theory and practice. Thereby, the author illustrates those subjects on the basis of positive and negative business examples.