Cross-Cultural Consumer Behavior

Description

Reaching out to consumers requires marketers to know who they really are and what they really want. In today’s hyper competitive marketing environment, It becomes more and more important, but equally difficult, to understand mechanisms surrounding consumer behaviors.

An area of particular interest for practitioners and academics deals with the impact of culture on consumption. In fact, even though, one can wonder if culture is still relevant in light of globalization issues, cultural differences remain strong drivers of consumer differences and bases for adapted marketing strategies. Indeed, as cultural influences make it a lot more difficult to understand consumers’ way of thinking and behavior, it remains an important stream of research and driver of strategic decisions. In addition, cultural differences are not limited anymore to national differences (borders) but a real multicultural sensitivity is required within many developed countries for companies to better understand and serve consumers and to remain competitive. Therefore, the critical question to be addressed in this seminar is “how does culture influence consumer behavior? ”.

This seminar provides participants with an opportunity to develop an understanding of consumer behavior in general and to address more specifically how culture impacts consumers decision making processes. A number of consumer behavior concepts will be examined and discussed in the seminar from a practical perspective. The knowledge of consumer behavior would enable participants to get into the mind of consumers, which would in turn contribute to the long-term success of their business. Cross-Cultural issues will be addressed with transnational comparisons and multicultural context within one country. Both managerial and academic cases will be used in the seminar and examples will be drawn from countries such as France, Mexico, Lebanon, United States, Canada, China, Tunisia.

Learning Outcomes:

• Uncover the Consumers Mind and Psychological processes and understand their Relevance to Marketing Strategy.
• Define cultural variables and cultural processes
• Understand acculturation and Ethnic Identity and their roles in developing marketing strategies in a multicultural context.
• Understand Marketing research issues in a cross cultural setting.
• Understand cross cultural influences and Use this understanding to Develop Marketing Strategy.

Seminar Organization:

This seminar uses an interactive and participative learning approach. Participants will participate invarious activities including lectures, group activity, hands-on applications and video case study.

Total Seminar Hours: 6

Leader

Frank Pons, Ph.D. is Full Professor of Marketing at Laval University (Québec, Canada).
He has conducted research and consulting projects in the United States, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Mexico and Lebanon. He has been an invited speaker at the ESSEC business school (Paris), HEC Montréal and the Ecole Superieure de Gestion (Beirut). His research has appeared in such publications as the Journal of Consumer Psychology, ournal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research, Psychology and Marketing, Journal of International Business Studies and Sport Marketing Quarterly and he has presented papers at more than 50 international conferences. His research interests include consumer behavior, services and sports marketing with an emphasis on cross-cultural issues. He is particularly interested in how cross-cultural differences affect customers during service encounters. His focus also includes acculturation processes and their impact on immigrants’ consumption habits.

Frank has also received several teaching awards and he has taught in different countries including the United States, Spain, Canada, Lebanon and France. Currently, he teaches Consumer Behavior, International Marketing and Marketing Research.