Marketing Across Cultures
JEAN-CLAUDE USUNIER
Understanding what is
country-specific and what is universal is essential for the design of marketing strategies
that can be successfully implemented across national markets. Marketing Across Cultures
explores the theoretical and practical implications of thinking local but acting global.
Unlike many texts, it emphasizes people, languages and cultures, and recognizes the
diversity in local consumer knowledge and marketing practices. This approach, which is
a)so followed by multinational companies, combines the search for global competitiveness
with the necessary adjustment for local success.
This successful text uses a
two-stage cultural approach to exploring international marketing:
• A cross-cultural approach
- this compares marketing systems and local commercial customs in various countries.
• An inter-cultural
approach - the study of interaction between business peoples of different national
cultures.
This-third edition offers
increased coverage of the globalization of markets, emphasizing in particular how consumer
behaviour and marketing environments are converging at a global level while local
customers still give very different meanings to consumption. Teaching materials (including
cases, exercises and critical incidents) illustrate the effects of cultural differences on
each facet of international marketing, including consumer behaviour, market research,
product and price policies, channel decisions and marketing communications.
Marketing Across Cultures is
an invaluable text for all undergraduates and MBA students studying international
marketing and for marketing practitioners who wish to improve their cultural awareness.
The front cover features an
original work entitled 'Les Beiges' by Irene Sturbelie. It symbolizes the lion of the
Flems and the Gallic cockerel representing the Walloons (two traditionally antagonistic
cultural groups in Belgium), united by their love of football.
Jean-Claude Usunier is
Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universite Louis Pasteur.