A pragmatic approach to the analysis of marketing adaptation to Russian national culture

Abstract

There are a great number of transnational corporations operating all over the world. All of them are facing the issue of national culture, and cross-cultural difference is of vital importance. Choosing appropriate marketing strategy assures success or failure on the international market. The concept of culture is very dynamic and requires constant observation. The tasks marketing managers started to deal with became more complex, requiring cultural sensitivity and ability to overcome cross-cultural differences.
The research, presented in this paper, attempts to analyze whether national culture affects marketing strategy of international companies. The framework of cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede was taken as a basis for the analysis of Russian national culture. The author resorts to the quantitative approach based on the conducted survey and analyzes data collected in the Russian Federation. At first cultural values were used to identify Russia. Cultural values were measured at the individual level and compared to the previous findings on Russian culture. Analysis of differences in cultural values on the individual level among Russian population has shown that there is some kind of difference between previous findings related to Russia and findings obtained during the research. The level of adaptation was evaluated from the consumers’ point of view. Questionnaire was designed based on the analyzed literature, and obtained data was statistically analyzed with SPSS. Linear regression and correlation analysis were used to prove the hypotheses of the research work. Though Russian national culture was depicted as unique with a great number of peculiarities, in the industries, analyzed in this paper, the connection between marketing strategy adaptation and uncertainty avoidance, and marketing strategy adaptation and dimension of collectivism for fast moving consumer goods was proved statistically.
The second stage of the research included the analysis of the empirical evidence of the cultural adaptation of the advertisement of fast moving consumer goods for the Russian consumer. A number of samples were analyzed, and two cases are presented in the paper. The pragmatic approach was used for the analysis of the empirical data.
The results of the study add to the theoretical knowledge about the relationship between cultural dimensions in Russia and marketing strategies employed by transnational companies. They also contribute to the knowledge about Russian consumers’ behavior patterns. The framework can be potentially applied to other spheres of professional business in Russia.