Marketing across Cultures (3rd edition)

Citation

Jack, G. (2002), "Marketing across Cultures (3rd edition)", International Marketing Review, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 100-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/imr.2002.19.1.100.2

The work of Jean‐Claude Usunier (Faculty of Economics and Business, Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France) has been important in fostering an appreciation and understanding of the role of (predominantly national) culture in the study and practice of international management and marketing. Much of this work culminated in his 1998 book International & Cross‐cultural Management Research, which was positively reviewed in IMR, Vol. 18 No. 1, 2001. The present review deals with the 3rd edition of his well‐known student textbook Marketing across Cultures (previous editions appeared in 1992 and 1996 respectively), a weighty if compact tome of some 627 pages aimed primarily at undergraduate and MBA students of international marketing.

Usunier sets out the key assumptions which structure his text in a short introduction. He begins very refreshingly by arguing that traditional international marketing texts have, as an apparent rule, contented themselves with the implicit and culturally insensitive assumption that international marketing simply entails the extension of US marketing discourse into non‐US, non‐English‐speaking markets. Against this ethnocentric impulse, Usunier’s textbook is concerned to demonstrate to students the cultural diversity of marketing systems and consumption practices which exist across the globe, and the ways in which these national systems and local practices have been shaped and are shaping the seemingly irresistible processes of globalisation. Like many international management texts, he seeks to delineate both universal and country‐specific aspects of marketing and consumer behaviour that can be built into a global marketing strategy which benefits from elements of both standardisation and localisation. Usunier has a particular sensitivity then for cultural diversity in world markets and local consumption practices.

The text is subsequently split into four parts. Part One (three chapters) deals, somewhat predictably for such a textbook, with the concept of culture. It discusses the meaning of culture and presents a model of the ways in which it affects the actions of individuals as consumers. Emphasis is placed in this model on cultural constructions of time and space, and their relationship to cognition and behaviour. Having set out his conceptual framework, Part Two (four chapters) goes on to tackle the topic of globalisation and its links to consumer behaviour. Usunier looks here at the relationship between co‐existing global and local consumer cultures, the convergence of marketing environments at a systemic level and at issues of cross‐cultural market research. It is here that the 3rd edition of his text is stronger than the previous two editions. Part Three (five chapters) moves to the topic of marketing decisions and explores the implications of the issues covered in Part Two in terms of marketing strategy and the marketing mix. Finally, Part Four (five chapters) focuses on intercultural marketing communications as they are instantiated in advertising, other selected elements of the communications’ mix and marketing negotiations. It underlines the importance of the effects of culture on communicative style and its embodiment in language and non‐verbal communication.

As a teaching text for undergraduate and MBA students, the book has much to commend it to the reader. It has a clear message to students, is very detailed and well exemplified on the basis of previous research rather than idle anecdote and the questions and Appendices of cases/exercises/critical incidences at the end of each chapter are thought‐provoking and interesting.

The book is very strong on the application of its conceptual framework to the problematic managerial issues of international marketing, thus rendering it useful for “cross‐cultural training” with practitioners. Of particular note is Usunier’s insistence on the need for reflexivity in the teaching and practice of international marketing on account of the inherent subjectivity and culturally situated nature of all theoretical models and everyday marketing problems.

It would seem ironic then that, in spite of Usunier’s reflexive clarion, the main criticism I have of the book is that it is lacking in reflexivity of a theoretical nature. Whilst Usunier very explicitly sets out a tight conceptual model for his book, the theoretical frames which inform the ways in which he sees the nature of these concepts and their inter‐relationships are problematic, in places outdated and sometimes contradictory. His outline of culture, for example, rests largely on the problematic and outdated functionalist anthropologies of Malinowski (1944) and Goodenough (1971). Anthropological theories of culture, particularly those of a post‐structuralist nature, have moved the agenda forward significantly.

Furthermore, Usunier also seems to hop quite happily between functionalist, interpretivist and in some places neo‐Weberian notions of culture. Some awareness that he is making such theoretical shifts would be of benefit to the reader, since it would, presumably, serve to highlight the disparities between these theoretical frames and the different understandings of culture to which they give rise.

But perhaps this is too much to expect of a student textbook on international marketing. After all, Usunier’s objective in writing the text is to raise awareness of the cultural contingencies of consumer behaviour and to provide students with a model and a set of concepts which will enable them to “deal with intercultural situations in international marketing”. All in all, Usunier’s text does go a significant way towards achieving these objectives. My concern, however, is that in attaining these pedagogical goals, he is unreflexively reinforcing a problematic and contradictory frame of reference on culture and in turn compounding the paradigmatic stasis of international marketing scholarship.