The Influence of National Culture on Marketing Strategies in Africa

Abstract

This study investigates the national cultural factors that influence marketing strategies implemented by international firms in thirteen African countries. This is an exploratory study based on interviews and questionnaires involving fifty marketing managers for data collection. Data was analyzed using a combination of content analysis with coding techniques. The findings demonstrate that the national cultural factors studied influence the marketing strategies at different levels. Sales promotions are impacted by six factors while new product introduction is mainly influenced by power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Language is from far the most influencing cultural factor on communication and advertising strategies. The findings indicate that it is possible for managers to design and implement better business strategies when entering the African market. This research extends the knowledge of African culture and its impact on consumer behavior, which is an important variable in marketing.

Hofstede’s Culture Values Survey in Albanian Private Hospitals

“…Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) shows the magnitude of confrontation with the unknown and risk taking decisions in a society [1,10]. In uncertainty avoiding countries, just as the name suggests, what is uncertain and different is not welcomed, must be avoided and sometimes must be fought.…”

“…The focusing on future results rather than actual outcomes is what long term orientation cultural dimension measures. In a more concise way, long term orientation shows the prevalence of desire of future result over immediate outcomes in individuals [10].…”

“…The study of cultural values in the managerial endeavors has gain importance over time since it is seen as the starting point of reference to understand changes and enable the adaptation of managerial systems to increase outcomes. This explains the importance that managerial study experts give to the understanding of the dimensions of culture, since they associate culture with the success or failure of businesses [2,6,[8][9][10].…”

“…Under the influence of globalization, the interaction of cultures is very tangible [10][11][12][13]. It is already impossible to think of an interaction between countries and companies without being open to cultural differences and commonalities.…”

The internationalization of African fintech firms: marketing strategies for successful intra-Africa expansion

“…The high levels of ethno-linguistic fractionalization in Africa (Luiz, 2015) provide a complex setting as the high levels of intra-country diversity make it difficult to implement uniform marketing strategies. For example, Ansah (2016) and Bosson et al (2016) (Chikweche and Fletcher, 2012) for product development, distribution and other marketing mix decisions. The role and of use local community leaders (or opinion leaders) to disseminate information about products also comes to the fore (Acquaah, 2012).…”