Marketinguese – The Universal Language of Marketing?

I came across an article written by Professor Dae Ryun Chang that talks about the ineffectiveness of the typical Western approach to marketing in Asian countries. He criticizes certain marketing professionals who deeply believe in the language of successful marketers that everyone can use and employ, otherwise known as “Marketinguese”, and offers suggestions to keep in mind when doing business in Asia.

Image from: http://www.melodymaung.com/2009/06/western-and-asian-approach-towards.html

Image from: http://chanroeun.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/western-vs-asian-culture

Coming from a Korean background and having lived in both Western and Asian countries, I certainly understand Professor Dae’s argument. There are differences in culture, race, religion, values, politics, society and lifestyles. Ignoring these differences would definitely lead to a failure of the marketing strategy. Marketers from Western cultures need to understand that Asian consumers engage with the products, services and brands from a very different cultural perspective. For example, Korea has an extremely strong national pride and the entire country becomes one cohesive unit especially during the World Cup or the Olympics. Korea, however, is also a quite segregated nation with some people who do not want to be associated with others from certain cities or regions. By province, there are different dialects, hobbies, food, personalities and preferred lifestyles, and if Western marketers did not do enough research or made segmentation target errors, the results from their strategies would not be all that successful.

I have always been annoyed when Western people group all the Asian countries into one. Your ethnicity, religion and cultural background don’t seem to matter all that much as long as you have black hair, eat rice and use soy sauce in cooking. I think this is the biggest mistake that even the biggest companies make during their global expansion into Asian countries: they have a rather broad target market and an even broader marketing approach. Asia is NOT a country. Each Asian country has a distinct culture and the more local a marketing strategy is, the more likely it is to be successful.