Cultural Target Marketing

In today’s global economy, businesses increasingly face the challenge of marketing products and services to consumers of diverse cultural backgrounds. We find this to be increasingly true as we do business in our surrounding communities, and not just when we are looking to expand into foreign markets. Businesses often face culturally diverse customer bases in their home markets. In fact, a person would be hard-pressed to find a large city that does not have at least one culturally distinct neighbourhood.

The idea that consumers are culturally similar, with culturally similar purchasing habits has been forced to make way for a new methodology that seeks to understand the motivators and habits of distinct cultural groups. Different cultures hold different values and different ideas of social acceptability. These differences must be translated by a business' marketing department into products and service services that are in line with the expectations of the cultural groups that make up a businesses market.

And this is just the start. Cultural values have implications for diverse workforces, competing with culturally diverse rivals, and for selling (not strictly marketing) to culturally diverse consumers. Analyzing our culturally diverse consumer groups through a marketing lens allows a business to ensure its message will fit with the expectations of its market with the goal of increasing market share.

Cultural Values

We see different cultural values around us every day. The way a group of people prefer to behave, live and conduct themselves reflects their established values. Because values are a preference for one state of being over another, they are often measured on a scale against their opposite. For example, cultures tend to have modern versus traditional or active versus passive values.

How many distinct culture groups exist in your Target Market? List them here.