Chapter 4 Introduction

Chapter 4, Cultural Dynamics in assessing Global Markets (Cateora, Graham & Gilly, 2013) discusse issues related to marketing in different culture. It discusses where different cultures came from and how a change is planned in a culture to bring about a change. Culture is an important factor that affects the marketing strategy for any product or service. Marketers engage in quantitative and qualitative researches to study and assess the diversity of cultures and develop effective marketing strategies for those cultures. In the following sections of this paper I have answered problems 17, 18 and 19 as suggested by the course instructor for the completion of the assignment for week 2.

Innovations are described as either functional or dysfunctional. Explain and give examples of each.

In the modern technologically advanced world, innovation in organizational processes and defining goals can assist in transforming the organization. But Innovation is termed as the creator as well the destroyer of industry by Utterback, (1994). It means that innovation can either be functional or dysfunctional. When a dysfunctional innovation occurs, the effects of its results are not socially desirable. For example in the text book the example of condensed milk delivery to unhealthy children in underdeveloped countries is provided. It is normally perceived that this should act as an agent of positive change but there has been a case where condensed milk caused health consequences like diarrhea, dysentery and high infant mortality in a certain cultural context. So we can conclude that innovation could prove really functional and have positive implications or it may be dysfunctional in some cultural contexts.

Defend the proposition that a multinational corporation has no responsibility for the consequences of an innovation beyond the direct effects of the innovation, such as the products safety, performance, and so forth.

There is always a possibility that the consequences of innovation can be unintended and undesirable (Sveiby, Gripenberg, Segercrantz, Eriksson, & Aminoff, 2009,). In my opinion, the proposition that multinational corporations has no responsibility is fundamentally wrong. There are dysfunctional innovations ad they are not primarily due to a chance, but over ambitiousness to earn more profits.

For me it would be hard to defend the proposition. Instead I would argue that organizations should make their production processes and performance cycles safe and environmental friendly to avoid the disasters that could be cause by dysfunctional innovation. Companies should have an inbuilt mechanism to assess the consequences of their innovation. If they have any doubts about the consequences, they must work to eliminate these doubts by making necessary corrections.

Find product whose introduction into a foreign culture may cause dysfunctional consequences and describe how the consequences might be eliminated and the product still profitably introduced.

Research has suggested that excessive intake of fast food may cause wright gain and insulin resistance that could result in clinical diabetes (Pereira, Kartashov, Ebbeling, Van Horn, Slattery, et al., 2005). Let’s consider the introduction of fast food to a newly developing country that has a growing middle class with reasonable purchasing power which is at rise. The dysfunctional consequences of this introduction could be that the growing middle class might get addicted to it and start an excessive intake of the fast food. This could result in weight gain and diabetes. To eliminate these consequences, the fast food company can work to change the composition of their products. They can introduce new and healthy ingredients to their food. They do want to earn profits, which is why they won’t tell their customers to eat less fast food but they can decrease the amount of sugar in their soft drinks and take other measure like adding more protein and less carbohydrates to their food.