Especially in countries like the United States that are becoming more and more diverse, understanding the unique beliefs, practices and values of different cultures can improve marketing tactics and target a larger audience. In this article, we discuss understanding cultural meanings of various symbols and how this affects the implementation of appropriate marketing strategies.
Benefits of Understanding Cultural Meanings of Symbols
A symbol is anything that carries meaning and represents something else by association. It is essential to understand how the meanings of symbols can change in different cultures to avoid controversy, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and negative reactions. By taking the time to discern these meanings, we can understand the culture better, show respect to that culture, and convey the appropriate and intended message to the target audience. This process has been termed ‘intercultural accommodation’: the attempt to adjust or familiarize oneself with people belonging to a different culture in order to improve communication.
Blunders in intercultural communication occur when marketers do not take the time to understand and respect the values of their constituents. For an American telephone company, a commercial that featured a Latina wife telling her husband to call a friend and tell them they would be late was ineffective because the company failed to recognize that Latina women do not typically order their husbands.
Color Symbolism in Different Cultures
Color is one of the first elements to consider in designing an effective marketing campaign. It can hold a fundamental role in the beliefs and practices of various cultures, but often the symbolic meaning of a color varies drastically from culture to culture, and can sometimes even have exactly the opposite meaning in one culture from its meaning in another culture.
White
In Western cultures, white is generally a symbol of peace, purity, and innocence. Think of people who normally wear white, and some of the first that may come to mind are brides, angels or doctors. In Eastern cultures, however, it is generally a symbol of death, and probably wouldn’t have the same associations as it does in the West.
Interestingly, vocabulary for color can also be influenced by climate. For example, Eskimos use 17 words for white as applied to different snow conditions.
Yellow
We think of yellow as a color that symbolizes happiness and hope, but yellow has an even broader range of connotations globally, such as honor and courage (Japan), mourning (Egypt and Burma), merchants (India), joy and wealth (Middle East), aristocracy and prominent figures (Africa), and royalty (Thailand).
Orange
Orange is utilized symbolically in the U.S. as a color of road hazards and traffic delays, but in Asia, it represents quite the opposite. Orange is considered a life-affirming color of positivity and spiritual enlightenment.
Animal Symbolism in Different Cultures
Spanning many centuries and cultures, animals have represented a wide range of concepts, including gods and royalty, the supernatural, and have even indicated distinct personality traits.
Horse
In the Hindu religion, the horse is associated with the cosmos. The Romans would sacrifice a horse to Mars (the god) once every year in October and keep its tail, a symbol of fertility and rebirth, throughout the winter. Native American tribes associated the horse with wisdom and freedom and respected the horse for its role as a messenger. Contrastingly, the Chinese associate the horse with stability, endurance, and persistence. Today, Greco-Romans and Celtic nations consider the horse a symbol of war, as well as victory, courage, longevity, power, and honor.
Grasshopper
Native Americans believe that when a grasshopper is seen, the individual who encountered the grasshopper will soon receive good news. In Chinese culture, the grasshopper is similarly viewed as a very positive symbol. It represents longevity, good luck, fertility, wealth, and virtue. In some parts of China, grasshoppers were kept as pets in homes, where they were believed to embody the souls and spirits of deceased family members. In Ancient Greece, grasshoppers represented nobility, status, and immortality.
Cats
In the U.S. and most of Europe, if a black cat crosses your path, it is primarily associated with bad luck and witchcraft. However, in the United Kingdom, black cats are symbols of good luck; if a black cat entered your home, it would be perceived as a sign of good luck and would be kept in the home to ensure safety. Cat were even more revered in Egypt where they were considered a symbol of grace and poise. In Ancient Rome, the cat was a domestic symbol and was considered the guardian of homes.
Evidently, even today, cultures maintain very different meanings and symbolic importances of animals. Once again, a marketing failure can be avoided by respecting the different cultural beliefs and opinions regarding animals. In the 1970s, an aftershave for men was marketed in the Middle East and featured a man and a dog in a rural scene. However, the product did not sell well in Islamic countries, where dogs are not considered to be ‘man’s best friend,’ and are, rather, viewed as dirty animals.
The Effect of Language On Perception
Language can directly affect how the people of various cultures perceive their surroundings. The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis theorizes that a person’s language determines and limits what he or she experiences. Not all concepts can be expressed in some languages, creating a language barrier that can affect, for example, one’s perception of color. The Shona language in Zimbabwe and the Boas language in Liberia have no words to distinguish red from orange, so people of these cultures often fail to recognize a difference between the two colors.
To avoid basic marketing errors, it is critical to have a deep understanding of a culture’s first language if it is different from your own. Words that have a positive meaning or no meaning in one culture can have a negative meaning in another. In the 1970s, when American Motors tried to market the Matador, its new car, to Puerto Rican consumers, sales were extremely low because Matador translated to ‘killer.’ In another instance, a major golf ball manufacturer developed special packaging for export to Japan with sets of four golf balls. When sales were lower than expected, they later found that in Japan, four is pronounced ‘shi’ which is the same pronunciation as the word ‘death.’ The Japanese consider the number to be bad luck, and houses and flats in Japan containing the number four are usually given to foreigners.
Visual Perception in Different Cultures
Cognitive and perceptual processes are constructed through participation in cultural practices. Research has found that East Asian perception is more holistic and that people from Eastern cultures are more likely to attend to the context of an image, while Westerners are more likely to attend to, perceive, and remember the attributes of salient objects in an image. Therefore, culture can affect the layout and design of an advertisement or brochure. If the consumers are from East Asian countries, they are more likely to recall the advertisement as a whole, whereas consumers from Western countries are more likely to remember a few distinct, often centralized, images within an advertisement.
Cultures can also differ in visual perception of writing. One important note to remember is that, while English readers read from left to right, we easily forget that this is not the order that all languages read. When consumers in the Middle East were shown a series of pictures depicting someone feeling ill, taking medication and then feeling better, they read it from right to left, and took the meaning to be feel good, take medicine, feel sick. Not exactly the intended message.
Communication Styles Across Cultures
Differences in individual perception and construction of meaning are fundamentally rooted in the values and beliefs of a culture. Edward T. Hall theorized that these values can be separated into two distinct categories based upon the background and surrounding circumstances in which communication takes place. People in high context cultures, such as Thailand, know and can understand one another well enough to be able to communicate effectively without always relying on words and other explicit forms of communication. In low context cultures, such as the U.S., because of the many cultural differences among people that exist, it is hard to rely on forms of communications that are not explicit and thus they often rely on the literal interpretation of words.
Whether they are targeting consumers in high context or low context cultures, marketers are bound to utilize various elements (color, language, animals, images, etc.) that hold symbolic meanings, and to establish effective intercultural communication, it is critical to be aware of and to respect the ways in which these meanings can differ.
