International marketing communication - cultural context

Every year thousands of products and services are introduced to foreign markets. Countless marketing actions with an international reach are taken. Up to 85% of these actions fail, in most cases due to misunderstandings with an intercultural background. The illusion of a world without boundaries made many companies and organizations disregard the role of intercultural differences in course of their international actions. As a result, the achieved results are in many cases far from expectations. These experiences have shown that taking all sorts of commercial actions (and not only) with an international reach, it is necessary to pay particular attention to the existing cultural differences in order to achieve success in the implementation of the planned strategy. The goal of this amele is to show in what way cultural factors can determine decisions in international marketing. Particular attention is devoted to the decisions associated with marketing communication, that is, the way in which cultural factors influence our preferences concerning the style of communication and what two basic styles are distinguished within intercultural communication. On the basis of particular examples it will be shown on the one hand in what ways these styles are visible in various forms of marketing messages coming from various countries. On the other hand it will also be shown in what way these messages reflect (very often unwittingly) the culture and the system of values of an organization of the place were the messages originated. Before we start discussing the above-mentioned issues, the basic assumptions of the cultural marketing, as well as the term of culture, its models and dimensions will be presented.