This week, I can hear the word “Halloween” everywhere. Everyone is talking about this coming Halloween weekend plan. Every store sells Halloween products or promote products relating to Halloween. For example, restaurants decorate inside and outside the restaurant as Halloween. Make it dark and put scary dolls on the wall. Also waiters and waitresses wear Halloween custom. To make the restaurant different from others, they promote lots of event and provide gifts for Halloween. But this common Halloween Party is totally new to me because we don’t celebrate Halloween in Korea. I know Halloween because I have seen this culture in movies or dramas. I’m so excited that I can experience new culture this time. But at the same time I thought the importance of culture in marketing.
Imagine a Canadian company is promoting Halloween theme in Korea around this season. I’m pretty sure they can’t attract lots of people because Halloween is not holiday in Koreaand not many people know what it is about. Therefore it is really important
to understand culture of market place.
Here are some examples.
There is big Korean food company, Nongshim, which try to globalize their instant noodle, Ramen, and they sold the same Ramen product as Korea in India which isbeef flavour. The result was totally unsuccessful. If the marketers were smart, they shouldn’t have sold that beef flavour ramen with the picture of cow on the package. Since the Indian worship the cow and they don’t eat beef. This is the example of misunderstanding the culture.
On the constraint, the big Korean electronic company, LG, made ‘Mekaphone’ for Muslim people. Mekaphone has compass on the phone so that Muslim people can find the place to bow easily. This was big success at Muslim culture. Also, the other Korean food company, Orion, changed the package of snack from blue to red color to export to China because they knew that Chinese think red as lucky color and love the color.
Therefore understanding culture is important for marketing. Depend on how well you understand the culture and make proper strategy, the result can be totally different.