论文写作 The International Market Scenarios Of Expanding Organisations
Consumer Behavior & the Theories:
When it comes to winning a market share, understanding consumer behavior becomes inevitable. It is a chain process. If the organization wants to succeed it has to win a significant market share and in order to do so it has to satisfy its customers and the customers will only be satisfied if they are given what they truly want and need. "Target Marketing" therefore comes into play. It has been observed often that companies spend huge amounts on marketing and advertisement campaigns which sometimes fail to catch the attention of a lot of customers. In such a case their extensive investment on advertising and marketing goes in vain. Hence it is extremely important to identify people who need the products and advertise it to them.
Both Hofstede and Schwartz helped us in analyzing and understanding consumer behavior. Let us look at Hofstede's work first. Culture and consumer behavior are more often than not intricately linked. Culture invariably goes a long way in deterring the behavior and likes and dislikes of the consumers. For instance, a person from a culture prohibiting the consumption of meat will not have a demand for meat at all. There are a few shortfalls in analyzing consumer behavior through this theory. Firstly, it only helps in making assumptions and does not go a long way in predicting exactly how a consumer would behave in a particular environment as there are extraneous variables interfering with the behavior and decisions of the individuals. The theory lays a lot of importance only on culture, but, it ignores the fact that there a lot more factors affecting behavior of consumers. It can therefore be said that the theory does not have a comprehensive approach towards understanding consumer behavior.
Looking at Schwartz's theory, it is evident that it is much more individual oriented and proves to be more helpful in understanding consumer behavior. Further, the behavior of consumers in a particular region can be predicted with much more accuracy using this theory as it nearly nullifies the problem related to unpredictable variables in understanding consumer behavior. Schwartz's theory lays much more importance on individual level analysis than Hofstede's theory which makes it much more refined and suited for predicting consumer behavior as it has many more areas covered for analysis than Hofstede's theory. The theory is extremely reliable for organizations to base their decisions upon.
In conclusion, it can be said with certainty that Schwartz's theory goes a long way in predicting consumer behavior than Hofstede's theory taking into account numerous factors mentioned above.
References:
1: Stephan Dahl, 2001- Intercultural Research- The current state of knowledge, Middlesex University Business School.
2: Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. M. Zanna. San Diego, Academic Press.
3: Hofstede, G. 1991. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, London: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
4:Hofstede, G. and Michael H. Bond. 1984. "Hofstede's Culture Dimensions: An Independent Validation Using Rokeach's Value Survey." Journal
of Cross-Cultural Psychology 15(4): 417-433.
5: Hofstede, G. 1980. Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
6: Hofstede Geert-2001-. Culture's Consequences, Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 2001
论文写作 The International Market Scenarios Of Expanding Organisations
