Assignment Sample on 7BSP1271 Marketing Across Cultures
Introduction
The purpose of the report is to analyse or evaluate SMEs global marketing strategy. The understanding about the global corporation strategies to design its marketing operations across multiple culture. This helps the SMEs to able to explore multiple international regions (Baena, 2019). It is known that every country has set of different culture or value system, and it has a large influence on the global marketing strategy of business. This is because every culture consists of different communication patter, gesture/posture even lifestyle differences also exist. In that case, the incorporating the cultural values in the marketing design is important for appealing larger customers. This study will outline about the selected SMEs firm current marketing operations and how it can use in diverse cultural regions. The selected firm would be PureGym which is UK based fitness firm that offers no-frill gym services to target audiences. The best part of firm is that it’s come into incorporation in 2008 and short span of time it has reached to multiple regions of Europe and UK (De Mooij, 2021). It also covers Switzerland and Denmark etc. It is gaining huge success in present scenario due to increasing demand of fitness industry post-pandemic. That’s the reason why, Puregym now plans to expand its membership services within the Asian developing countries through design right marketing strategy. It supports the firm to get maximum awareness from target audiences.
This report will begin with the description of PureGym and followed by evaluate of culture impact on SMEs marketing strategy. The report also outlines about the selection of four marketing mix marketing strategies for the Asian market entrances (Leonidou and Hultman, 2019). It also highlights the implementation of marketing strategy in Asian developing culture via present the proper justification.
Brief description of the company and its current markets and products
PureGym belongs to fitness industry and came into existences in 2008 in UK by peter Roberts. It’s a has many gym chains and fitness operators in Europe regions and provides high-quality, low-cost fitness services. The group has approx. 1.6 million members across over 500 gyms in domestic country (PureGym, 2021). It also holds the important positions across the regions like Denmark, Switzerland where it operates under the PureGym, fitness world and basefit brands. The key distinctive feature of this medium size enterprise that is the first one who introduce flexible model where members pay average £20 per month and have no contract commitment (Stewart, 2017). PureGym positions itself in UK market as a customer Gym as it does not provide any frills such as Spa facilities or any trainers but allowed people to bring their personal trainers. Basically, this Gym keep things quite simple through make registration on online and become a member of it and do Gym in the open time. It does not believe in providing any-type of frills like membership program as it develops liberal policies for people to join it without including any type of contracts. These areas support the save maximum investments or able to keep the cost low. This marketing strategy supports them to get enough recognition in its domestic market. PureGym is associated with gym services, fitness world and basefit brands etc (Algar, 2021). Its current market areas include Europe, UK, Switzerland, and Denmark etc. Therefore, it is must for firm to critically analysis of different cultures so that they could explore new cultural values through design right marketing strategy.
It became important for PureGym to plan out different global marketing strategies as post-pandemic people become more conscious about their fitness. The huge exposure of social media has also played an important role to make realisation about the importance’s of fitness for the human beings especially in present environment where climate changes, virus spreading become a common thing (O’Regan, 2016). That’s why, it would be better for the PureGym to focus on the Asian developing countries like India as its an emerging region with growing youth generation. In that case, it would be right to grab their attention and motivate them towards the fitness regime. Therefore, PureGym will focus on certain aspects for Indian marketing plan as per the local people culture.
Critically evaluate impact of culture on SMEs marketing strategies
According to Bayarçelik et al. (2014), the culture depicts the lifestyle way and attributes of specific group of people. It also involves the way people speaks, dress, attitudes, learnings and believes or values which drives the people in their personal and professional lives. In respect to marketing strategies, there are various factors affect the SMEs promotions like target market, budget, economy, and competition but culture also has a great impact on customer preferences which is considered as an important factor for running business to longer duration. In the views of Gnizy et al. (2014), marketing strategies are related with product promotion, bring differentiation to get competitive advantage against the competitors or cost control with maintain quality. Culture has a great effect on marketing strategies. Marketer can’t survive long until it analyses the importance’s of local culture before selling out the product in the market. Marketing plans are totally based on product promotion or creation of awareness about the product so that consumers are influenced to purchase the product (Aksoy, 2017). This could only be possible with the highlight of right cultural values which suites the local people taste or preferences. Whenever, the marketers do not convey their thinking to people, they fail to attain attention of local people and must suffer huge losses. Even the choice of local people is vital for performing local trader but in case of global marketing strategies marketers must have to deep study of cultural values for making positive effects on product promotions.
Regarding small-medium enterprises, Li et al. (2019) identified that marketers have been restricted with limited budgets, workforces, or technology. In that case, the development of global marketing strategy is becoming a critical task for the business. Post-globalisation of business environment, SMEs gained benefits to explore global market, but also facing huge competition in international region. Its not easy for any corporation to start or continue the business for a long duration without executing marketing strategies. International market consists of change in consumer taste or preferences. For instance, Due to availability of wider options consumers don’t wait for a single product. They can easily shift towards new firm. This is the main reason why businesses are more become consumer oriented. Marketers always thrive for customer satisfaction by keeping in mind to offer best quality, less price and easily access to consumers. But all these aspects are largely dependent upon culture factors. SMEs are facing many problems regarding marketing and culture as culture management become a critical challenge for the small or medium enterprises. To be consistent in international market, it is necessary for firms to understand the diversity and complexity of marketing activities. However, consumers consist of different choices in diverse countries and these differences are majorly driven with the diversified culture, attitude, values, or norms etc. Zhang et al. (2014) found that culture has a deep influence on product selection, motivation, and lifestyle of customers. The cultural influences can be shown with how many people are selecting same kind of products. In the era of international expansion regardless to size of business, there is need for a redesign in the marketing strategies of a product. The increasing trade among cross-border has led the SMEs to moving extensively towards the global marketing strategy. This concept gives rise lot of issues for SMEs because of differences between language, people perception, local policies, or deep-rooted religious values. Likewise, in country like Japan the concept of Karaoke culture is famous where after-work engagement between colleagues is important whereas, west corporate Asian countries like UAE, Arab tend to be less strict on hiring from the beginning and is generally more lenient to any under-performer on staff (Aksoy, 2017). Similarly, the western culture countries like UK, US people consume high-calorie food products and always end up taking packed food products whereas, Asian countries people have more preferences towards freshly cooked food due to which they are less inclined towards packaged or frozen foods. That’s why, it is true that Asian people have more strong immunity than western culture people. It clearly indicated the cultural differences. In respect to tap region, SMEs need to undertake intense research about the local people attitude, preferences even climatic conditions as these areas have a strong impact on the people purchasing decisions. This can be explained with the cold countries example where Canada, UK based regions include more winery brands as people prefer to consumer it because of low temperature climatic condition. Whereas Asian countries people have less culture of winery in comparison to cold places countries (Bourletidis and Triantafyllopoulos, 2014). Therefore, this way the people behaviour is highly influenced by the surrounding of them. It can be stated that only those companies are more successful now-a-day’s which are exporting their products to cope with the specific demands of a particular culture. SMEs to get the right marketing strategy in the global business then definitely requires for the proper focus on the cultural aspects as its only process to reach out on the consumer satisfaction or loyalty towards the brand. The high satisfaction of consumer towards the brand are the major source of sustainability for business in today’s scenario whether its small or medium business.
Selection of four marketing mix strategies through suggest cultural theory
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory is one of the recognised one to understand the differences in culture across the countries and learn the ways businesses are doing across the diverse culture. In other words, this theory is efficient is distinguish between the national cultures, dimensions of culture and assess the impact on the business strategies (Mazanec et asl., 2015). The Hofstede’s cultural dimensions framework has been emphasised by many SMEs business to perform global expansion. This theory utilises by the business to study about the culture of region for getting major acceptances from local people. Hofstede mentioned many factors of culture and that culture is a complex rather than chaotic (Schmitz and Weber, 2014). He defined the five dimensions of culture including power distance, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation. He used this dimension and stated that culture is collective programming of the mind which differentiate the member of one human group to another.
(Sources: CFI, 2021)
Power distance index: – The power distance index the extents to which inequality and power are tolerated. This dimension indicates the inequality and power viewed from the follower’s perspective (Minkov et al., 2018).
Individualism or collectivism: – The dimension of Individualism or collectivism indicates the degree to which society has integrated into group and their perceptions how much they are dependent upon each other (Favaretto et al., 2016). Individualism stands for sole decision-maker while collectivism include peer suggestions for construct the decision.
Uncertainty avoidances: – The dimension of uncertainty avoidances indicates the extent to which uncertainty are tolerated (Song et al., 2018). The culture with high uncertainty avoidances means strict rules and regulations. The low dimension clearly reflects the liberal policies.
Masculinity/ Femininity: – The dimension of Masculinity/ Femininity indicates the preference of society for achievement., attitude towards equality. This dimension reflects the cultural values towards the gender basis (Valaei et al., 2016).
Long-term orientation/Short-term orientation: – This dimension indicates about the extent to which society views its time horizon. The long-term orient ones are those who focus on future through involve short-term success while, the short-term orientation shows focus on the near future involving delivering short-term success and emphasis on present than the future (Rinuastuti et al., 2014). It supports on the achieving of quick results and respect for traditions.
Indulgences: – This dimension indicates the extent to which people try to control their desires and impulses. The culture of low indulgences has usually bind with the social values (Pergelova and Angulo-Ruiz, 2017).
Based on Hofstede culture theory, it is learned that cultural diversity is not only solely dependent upon language barrier, diverse living lifestyle but its also include many factors which discussed above. PureGym which is SMEs of UK based fitness industry can apply the Hofstede theory for the exploring of global marketing strategy. Thompson (2014) analysed the various components of culture that influences the marketing programs. There has been always a debate over the problems faced by the marketers to make an appropriate strategy for marketing. The influences of culture on marketing mix are always exist due to change in the needs of consumer because of cultural diversification. This problem could be solved by PureGym through apply Hofstede theory of culture. It would guide the firm towards future directions that marketers can consider cultural differences between various groups while deciding marketing programs.
PureGym is an emerging fitness-based firm which has received enough appreciation in European or western culture, but it’s time to explore different cultures regions like Asian culture such as India. From the study of Batrakoulis (2019), it is found that India fitness market is growing exponentially with over 27 million monthly as per the google. This is due to people are become more aware about the importance’s of integrated fitness regime for better health. The report also stated that it is expected to rise in fitness services with 30 million in 2023. This figure clearly indicated the growing fitness market of India. It would be beneficial for PureGym to expand its operations in Indian market. As per the application of Hofsetde theory the firm need to make deep knowledge about the Indian culture or people perceptions. This would be helpful to design the marketing strategy accordingly.
The Hofstede theory application reveal many insights about Indian culture or people behaviour which would be useful for designing of marketing strategy. It mentions below: –
India has high power distances which means that it follows culture where inequality in the form of power or bureaucracy exist. The hierarchical form like top-down structure is followed in society. India culture also support the collectivism culture where people decisions are linked with their peer, friends, or family opinion (Thompson, 2013). The collectivist societies people belong to the groupism strategy where one people view, or preferences are highly influences the other one. India culture also follows high uncertainty avoidances process where it deals with the risk or uncertainties through design strict rules, regulations. India people are mor futuristic as they look for long-term success through emphasis on persistence’s and long-term growth. India culture is men dominant where women are also given freedom to do but men’s power is always high whether at professional or personal grounds. Indian people have low indulgences as their actions are restrained by social norms.
Hence, the application of Hofseted dimension has clearly indicated that Indian culture people are deep-rooted with the social values as the people taste and preferences about the product or brand is also included the preferences of their closed ones. Similarly, there is hierarchy level is followed in India and it is based on power or income based. The Indian society is male dominances along with having strict rules to avoid the future uncertainties. Overall, this analysis generate important findings for PureGym is that firm need to select the target market in India as country culture is following differentiation based on power and income. It would be convenient to tap the customer as per the business model (Valaei et al., 2016). The Indian people are also price-sensitive in that case, PureGym no-frills concept could work wonders. The current generation of India are futuristic or incline towards the digital marketing then the social-media promotions would work for PureGym. Since firm is medium in size or business model is also supports the no-frills or low-cost people then in that case, Indian market would accept PureGym with ease. These justifications about Indian culture would be relevant to present that it is right market for PureGym to explore it.
Implementation of marketing mix strategy
In respect to get the right implementation of international marketing strategy in Indian culture, it would be better to design the marketing mix strategy as per the local customer taste and preferences. The design of right service, price-setting, promotion, or place would help PureGym to get the desired result in Indian market.
Product/Service: –
The market plan will be used by PureGym to facilitate the business in India through provide gym membership registration services to people. However, the gym could follow same business model of no-frills health clubs to people with availability of fitness services 24 hours 7 days in a week. These basic services would encourage the people to join the gym or focus on the health lifestyle (Londhe, 2014). Clients can book the gym registration at any time or location. The PureGym will plans to partner with multiple gym channels so that register members could join any of the brand in the big capital cities. This allows the people to access fitness services at every location. This kind of services even encourage freshers to start the gym activities.
Price: –
The major USP of PureGym is its low-cost services as it excludes frills like beauty therapies, spa, or any kind of unnecessary services. It simply focuses on the high-tech gym equipment’s, trainers to support the visitors (Thabit and Raewf, 2018). They charge low-cost for these services. This is because PureGym believes that fitness majorly includes right workout or food intake instead of beauty therapies or spa facilities etc. These won’t work for large fitness goal. That’s why, PureGym has designed the gym services in basic manner or charge reasonable price in comparison to other competitors. These practices would also support to those people who are still unexplored the fitness services as low-cost or easily accessibility would help people to get engage with the fitness services of PureGym.
Promotion: –
PureGym in its local region uses PR campaigns where it asks people to engage to Gym by outlining low-cost services for a custom fit to everybody. The brand exposes gym chains as the cyclic offering which means it opens its chain in multiple location so that member can access the gym or fitness equipment’s anywhere (Khan, 2014). This similar content marketing PureGym could use for Indian people as they are price-sensitive, or firm is also targeting the middle-income group. In that case, the use of right content over the social-site, email or even television commercials would help the firm to get high awareness from the Indian audiences.
Place: –
In respect to place, the PureGym uses local gym networks to locate the people. It always focuses on the centralised location where people can reach to the fitness centres. This same strategy will be utilised for Indian market as well (Mintz and Currim, 2013). However, the firm also uses the online membership to people so that they can access the services with ease.
Thus, this selected marketing mix strategy could work for PureGym to explore new culture on proper manner.
Conclusions
from the above study, it is concluded that culture has a strong impact on the development of global marketing strategy. It is justified with the instances of SMEs PureGym which will be designing marketing mix as per specific cultured people taste and preferences. This practice would support to get acceptances in global market.
Recommendations
The recommendations in the areas of global marketing strategy for next years are as follows: –
- Marketers should utilise of AI technology component such as Chatbot system. It is convenient way to interact with clients or even solve their queries or present the right product or services to people (Dale, 2016).
- Marketers must utilise of email marketing as its in current trend and will continue to be in trend as email marketing supports the firm about people reaction or it also allows firms to recall about the brand to target audience (Mago, 2017).
- Marketers must follow social-media influencers as per current trend youth become more motivates with the influencer’s vlogs, videos (Kim and Adhikari, 2020). It would be better to target the social-media influencers to review about the firm product or services.
- Marketer must follow e-market survey to understand the diversified culture of location as online based firm survey results helps small firms to understand the people behaviour or even not spend much for conducting survey by themselves in new market (Zlobina Natalya et al., 2015). The research-based firm could also support the marketers to gain insight about the customs, traditions of market.
References
Aksoy, H., 2017. How do innovation culture, marketing innovation and product innovation affect the market performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Technology in Society, 51(4), pp.133-141.
Algar, R., 2021. The Fitness Industry in the United Kingdom. In The Global Private Health & Fitness Business: A Marketing Perspective. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Baena, V., 2019. Global marketing strategy in professional sports. Lessons from FC Bayern Munich. Soccer & Society, 20(4), pp.660-674.
Batrakoulis, A., 2019. European survey of fitness trends for 2020. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal, 23(6), pp.28-35.
Bayarçelik, E.B., Taşel, F. and Apak, S., 2014. A research on determining innovation factors for SMEs. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 150, pp.202-211.
Bourletidis, K. and Triantafyllopoulos, Y., 2014. SMEs survival in time of crisis: strategies, tactics and commercial success stories. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 148, pp.639-644.
CFI, 2021. What is the Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory? [Online] Available at: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/hofstedes-cultural-dimensions-theory/
Dale, R., 2016. The return of the chatbots. Natural Language Engineering, 22(5), pp.811-817.
De Mooij, M., 2021. Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes. UK: Sage.
Favaretto, R.M., Dihl, L., Barreto, R. and Musse, S.R., 2016, September. Using group behaviors to detect hofstede cultural dimensions. In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) (pp. 2936-2940). IEEE.
Gnizy, I., Baker, W.E. and Grinstein, A., 2014. Proactive learning culture: A dynamic capability and key success factor for SMEs entering foreign markets. International marketing review.
Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of’marketing mix’and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.95.
Kim, J. and Adhikari, K., 2020. Current trends in kombucha: Marketing perspectives and the need for improved sensory research. Beverages, 6(1), p.15.
Leonidou, C.N. and Hultman, M., 2019. Global marketing in business-to-business contexts: Challenges, developments, and opportunities. Industrial Marketing Management, 78, pp.102-107.
Li, J., Liu, B. and Qian, G., 2019. The belt and road initiative, cultural friction and ethnicity: Their effects on the export performance of SMEs in China. Journal of World Business, 54(4), pp.350-359.
Londhe, B.R., 2014. Marketing mix for next generation marketing. Procedia Economics and Finance, 11, pp.335-340.
Mago, Z., 2017. New trends of marketing communication based on digital games. European Journal of Science and Theology, 13(6), pp.171-182.
Mazanec, J.A., Crotts, J.C., Gursoy, D. and Lu, L., 2015. Homogeneity versus heterogeneity of cultural values: An item-response theoretical approach applying Hofstede’s cultural dimensions in a single nation. Tourism Management, 48, pp.299-304.
Minkov, M., Bond, M.H., Dutt, P., Schachner, M., Morales, O., Sanchez, C., Jandosova, J., Khassenbekov, Y. and Mudd, B., 2018. A reconsideration of Hofstede’s fifth dimension: New flexibility versus monumentalism data from 54 countries. Cross-Cultural Research, 52(3), pp.309-333.
Mintz, O. and Currim, I.S., 2013. What drives managerial use of marketing and financial metrics and does metric use affect performance of marketing-mix activities?. Journal of Marketing, 77(2), pp.17-40.
O’Regan, M., 2016. Recent Competition and Markets Authority Practice in Control of Small Mergers. Competititon LJ, 15, p.211.
Pergelova, A. and Angulo-Ruiz, F., 2017. Comparing advertising effectiveness in South-American and North-American contexts: testing Hofstede’s and Inglehart’s cultural dimensions in the higher education sector. International Journal of Advertising, 36(6), pp.870-892.
PureGym, 2021. Fitness Market. [Online] Available at: https://corporate.puregym.com/about-us/fitness-market/default.aspx
Rinuastuti, H., Hadiwidjojo, D., Rohman, F. and Khusniyah, N., 2014. Measuring hofstede’s five cultural dimensions at individual level and its application to researchers in tourists’ behaviors. International Business Research, 7(12), p.143.
Schmitz, L. and Weber, W., 2014. Are Hofstede’s dimensions valid? A test for measurement invariance of uncertainty avoidance. interculture journal: Online-Zeitschrift für interkulturelle Studien, 13(22), pp.11-26.
Song, R., Moon, S., Chen, H.A. and Houston, M.B., 2018. When marketing strategy meets culture: the role of culture in product evaluations. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 46(3), pp.384-402.
Stewart, R., 2017. PureGym’s CMO on why the fitness firm’s latest campaign champions people, not six-packs. [Online] Available at: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/12/27/puregyms-cmo-why-the-fitness-firms-latest-campaign-champions-people-not-six-packs
Thabit, T. and Raewf, M., 2018. The evaluation of marketing mix elements: A case study. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 4(4).
Thompson, W.R., 2013. Now trending: worldwide survey of fitness trends for 2014. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal, 17(6), pp.10-20.
Thompson, W.R., 2014. Worldwide survey of fitness trends for 2015: what’s driving the market. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal, 18(6), pp.8-17.
Valaei, N., Rezaei, S., Ismail, W.K.W. and Oh, Y.M., 2016. The effect of culture on attitude towards online advertising and online brands: applying Hofstede’s cultural factors to internet marketing. International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 10(4), pp.270-301.
Zhang, M., Knight, G. and Tansuhaj, P., 2014. International performance antecedents in emerging market SMEs: Evidence from China. Journal of Global Marketing, 27(3), pp.161-177.
Zlobina Natalya, V. and Zavrazhina Kristina, V., 2015. Marketing in the social networks: current trends and prospects. St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University Journal. Economics, 56(6), pp.166-172.
