After reading my fellow classmate Jia Ling’s blog, ” UNIQLO Shows Basic Isn’t Boring”, I have to say that I cannot completely agree with her point of view.

I am a fan of Uniqlo myself. One of Uniqlo’s greatest competitive advantages is that its clothing material is really soft and warm. Also, nowadays people are getting more and more price-sensitive, and Uniqlo clothing’s perfect balance between quality and budget happens to meet this social trend.

However, I am really worried about the further development of Uniqlo. Since the production of clothes is retricted to limited styles which is interpreted as  “Made for All”, it is very hard for Uniqlo to meet the demand of Japan’s younger generations. In Japan, a person’ style is a very important evaluation criteria among young people.  A person with “style” are generally more respected and loved among young people in Japan. I think It is hard for Uniqlo to gain popularity among the young.

Since Uniqlo clothing has a great balance between quality and budget, it can meet buyers’ functional needs. How about buyers’ psychology needs? From my perspective, a lot of people buy clothes because they want to look stylish and rich. The simple design and the low-pricing  can hardly give people the psychological satisfaction that they are pursuing.

Link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/jialing/

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Can firms just use one common marketing approach and apply it both mono-cultural and multicultural society?

This may work well in the mono-cultural society since mono-cultural society is the society where almost all of the citizens share a similar heritage & culture. People living in the mono-cultural society tend to have similar beliefs and understanding. When it comes to the multicultural society, however, the single-strategy approach may fail to establish deep connections with consumers. Multicultural-society citizens come from different culture backgrounds. The cultural difference is a lot more than different languages.  People coming from different countries have very different values.Therefore, the consumers living in a multicultural society may not feel that the brand understands them uniquely if a single marketing approach is used. 

So, how to make multicultural marketing decisions?

To make marketing effective in multicultural markets, firms need to do more than just translating their advertisements into specific languages. Every firm has to know its customers’ cultures so well that it can integrate its products’ history into consumers’ beliefs. Then, the firm’s product will be very attractive.  I believe this is the main reason why a lot of big international firms are hiring employees coming from different ethnic backgrounds.