Who will you choose?
- An intercultural analysis regarding sport and marketing
In our modern, developed community sport has become very important, which means that sport has created its own community area with social, cultural and commercial functions. During the twentieth century a strong growth with different sports, whose practician are professional or amateur, takes place. At competitions, for example The Olympic Games or The World Championship, the national identity grows stronger. The grandstands fill with people wearing different, national symbols and national anthems sings diligent. Feelings like; pride, happiness, anger and sorrow gets an outlet in these situations. This points out how strong people can feel about sport and its context. Sport fills people with interest and compassion. A central perspective, for my description, is the significance of physical activity on an individual level. Training is, for a lot o people, an important element for everyday use, which pave the ways for a commercial market.
The market is huge and many different companies compete against each other to convince the consumers of their products. Clothes, shoes and sport attributes constantly develop to improve earlier models. Many companies act on a world market, which demands an intercultural competence. A cultural awareness, which becomes a tool to catch insight and interpret peoples mentality. This knowledge increases the creativity, but also gives an opportunity to understand people’s situations and different needs. Among the greatest sport companies are; Reebok, Nike and Adidas. Nike is the object for my analysis and study.
Nike has a web site where the consumers actively have to make some choices. These choices concerns; language, nationality, gender and age. The choices regarding language and nationality are one of many aspects that tell us that; Nike varies its marketing culturally depending on target group!
I have compared Nike’s marketing directed to women in different nations to support my theory. My comparison is between advertising films directed to European versus Japanese women. These advertising films can easily be found on www.nikewomen.com. In the films Nike uses different female international sport stars. European sport stars for European consumers and Asian sport stars for Japanese consumers.
Japan is a collectivistic country; the collectivity’s goals are valued over the individual. The communications meaning is often to be found in the situation, which tells us that Japan has a high – context culture. You can easily find signs of this in the Asian advertising films, for example the girls are non-verbal. In contrast to this the European films has signs of low-context culture and an individualistic angle of approach. The girls talk a lot of their feelings and reflections about their sport.
While working with this project many questions arise; Is it right to use different advertising films in different nations or does it only increase peoples prejudices? I have also future reflections. Cultures changes constantly so can the increased globalization, we today face, help us understand and reduce prejudices between people and nations?
Sarah Wirsén Örebro University
Comments
Hello Sarah, thank you for your interesting post. It has attracted my attention, because I am a great amateur of active way of life and professional advertisement.
Your questions, stated above, set me thinking… To my mind using different advertising films for different cultures is correct. In this case, it means that the company is concern for the definite culture in general, and for the definite customer in particular, wherever he/she lives. And of course such companies value the traditions. It gives a professional image to the company and appreciation from the society. Otherwise, it may be offended for somebody and leads to the loss of the potential market. It is a very serious question and all transnational companies should pay attention to it.
I am sure somebody has an opposite opinion, and I would like to listen it.
And what do you think, Sarah?
Posted by: Ekaterina Myasnikova | March 30, 2009 08:06 AM
Hello. I really enjoyed reading your post and I Find it is very interesting and the topic, that you have touched in it, is also very urgent and interesting. Answering your question, I want to say that it is very wise for companies to use different advertising campaigns for the target markets in different countries.
Even medium sized companies should think of the cultural differences, not to speak about such mighty companies as Nike, Adidas or Reebok.
I know that Coca cola’s advertising strategy is targeted to many different nations, so it’s advertising films differ very much: nationalities of actors, ways of advertising. There are so many cultures aspects, so called dimensions, that deserve attention of multinational companies, that are going to sell their products over the world.
Posted by: alice | April 2, 2009 03:19 AM
Hello! I was interested in your post. As for me, sport is an essential part of my life. I prefer an active and healthy way of living. To reach good results in any sports, it is necessary to use special clothes, equipment and adaptations. With it we are helped by leading world manufacturers of sports stock and clothes, such as Reebok, Nike, Adidas, Everlast and so on.
It is necessary for every company to advertise its production, and I think it is right to use different advertising films in different nation. Undoubtedly, each country has its own features, mentality and individuality. And consequently it is necessary for company to create advertising, observing at culture and customs of the country for which it is created.
Posted by: Sergey Penzin WE-63 | April 2, 2009 04:53 AM
Hallo, Sarah! It was interesting for me to read your post.
You were absolutely right,that many companies, which act on a world market, need to know cultural peculiarities to compete effectively in this or that market. A cultural awareness helps to interpret peoples mentality, to understand people’s situations and different needs.
Using different advertising for different countries is one of the best ways to attract new customers. More then that, it is a way to express your respect to other countries, to stress, that customers of this country are very important users of products you produce. The society always appreciates when the company takes into consideration their needs, mentality.
One more thing I would like to add is that the correct understanding of the market the company works with simplifies the elaboration of new products, and helps the company operate successfully.
Posted by: Alexandra Zvereva | April 5, 2009 12:14 AM
Hallo!Sarah,I really like your analysis regarding sport and marketing.I totally agree with you that sport has become very important of our life.I know it for sure, as I have a direct relevance to sports.I have 7 years of experience in ballroom dancing.This kind of sport like many others requires a huge amount of accessories and special clothing.Ballroom dancing is a special kind of sport, so we have to deal with specific manufacturers of sports clothing and shoes.Among the greatest companies are:Supadance, Galex, Ray Rose and so on.As far as I know, all these companies use a universal advertising for different countries, despite fierce competition among themselves.To my opinion,using different advertising films for different cultures is wrong.Companies must first of all improve the quality of its products, here is what must be based competition.Good shoes, that's what helps the dancer long stay healthy, to dance well and to win competitions, rather than a different approach to the cultures and nationalities.This is not only in dancing but in all other kinds of sport.In my opinion, a different approach to different cultures and nationalities lead to increasing the already existing prejudices.But this is , of course, only my opinion and I think that few people will take my position, because people often pay great attention to detail, not noticing the essence of things.
Posted by: Natalia Tarasova | April 8, 2009 08:57 PM
Sarah, I liked your post. I think the topic is intersting because the comments that are here have different points of view, which is great!
I think advertising should base on differences in nations. That surely helps, because people from different nations are different. But people within one nationality are different too! That would be wrong if all the consumers of sport products (as in any other sphere) would be treated the same way. There are young, old, conservative, modern and other kinds of people. Diversity of people always exists and should be understood by advertisement producers. Moreover, population of many countries consists also of foreign people. And even a native to one country person may have a diferent point of view from all the other natives in that country.
Advertisements should be different for different groups of people, not much based on the nationality.
Posted by: Dmitry | April 10, 2009 06:47 PM
Hi, Sarah!
It was very interesting to read your post, and the comments make the topic even more interesting. I mean, it's always great to face some kind of a variety of views.
From my side, I'd like to express the opinion of a huge sportsfan, not a sportsman. So, I think that the idea with different types of advertisments for different target markets is very wise itself. Not so long ago I was reading Philip Kotler's book and there was a note about Jagermeister, medium-sized family concern producing alcohol products. Loosely connected with sports, but that’s not really essential in this case. And the importance is in the marketing strategy used by the company. The same product is marketed really differently in Europe and America. In the U.S. target market is mainly students, main competitors are Jack Daniels and Jose Cuerva, traditional advertising is barely used, instead the company sponsors different music festivals and supporting heavy metal bands. Jagermeister is positioned there as the source of happines for the campus. However, in Italy, for example, people tend to buy the same product as a digestif, like Ramazzotti or Averna liqueurs. In Germany this beverage is a kind of a traditional schnapps, with more traditional advertising and older potential customers. And the core here is that in all countries the product could find its own market and stable volume of sales.
But as far as the sports concerned, it’s more difficult to find the efficiency of different advertising campaigns. What is my opinion – people like winners. This is the same for everybody throughout the world. And this can be a universal motto for every marketing strategy. But if you can’t get the winner, then you have to find more interesting diverse ways to customers’ hearts. And here the national pecularities start to work.
Posted by: Tatiana Frolova | April 12, 2009 06:24 PM