Cultural Psychology and Marketing
The two most enjoyable courses I had taken this term at UBC were, Introduction to Marketing and Cultural Psychology. Interestingly enough, both have much in common in their content and context. The two topics are both ever so dynamic and applicable to everyday surroundings, it has given me much insight into what the future has to offer.
One of the main topics that I had found interesting was the difference in how Americans differ from the rest of the world’s holistic thinking. They are they only nation to perceive the world from a viewpoint with the subject as the focal point, and the environment as the background. This can be seen from politics, human interactions, art history, as well as practices of medicine.
When asked to describe the scene, holistic thinkers would describe the fish as being chased. In comparison, analytic thinkers would describe the fish as leading the school.
Now how does this apply to marketing? As an increasingly multicultural world, marketers must be exceptionally sensitive to cultural trends, to find out exactly how people do things and why they do things to create the biggest impact on the consumer. By identifying the cultural trends, products and services can interact and communicate to consumers in the most powerful context. Predicting the future is stepping in to the unknown, but by inspecting patterns of behaviours, we can find the best approaches.
Coined the term “melting pot”, there is an increasing ethnic and religious diversity found in North America. Communities are less likely to force assimilation of immigrating cultures, rather, to encourage traditions and ideals of the two different cultures. This also increases a different population with different points of view, becoming increasingly open-minded and creative. As an immigrant to Canada, I identify with both Canadian and Taiwanese culture – this type of East and West thinking is quite new, and the best companies would be able to pinpoint exactly how we behave and cater to our emotions and psychological needs. In a blog post by Connie Zhu, she explains her attitudes towards being an Asian American.
