How Us vs. Them Comparisons Blind Us

One line of discussion in last night's marketing strategy class was "cultural differences" among countries.

As expected, I completely went off on the ignorance of managers in this week's case who, when developing their strategy for the Italian market, focused on the notion that Italians are more fashion conscious and less educated than Scandinavians. (Note: I appreciate these case-embedded examples so we can talk about them in class. The examples are actually much less offensive than the lazy thinking I've encountered in business and academic organizations.)

My point is that stereotypes are not segments. Nor are they markets. In fact, the Italian market is very heterogeneous overall. There are poor people, rich people, fat people, skinny people, and even people with chickenpox (there's an Oscar Mayer Wiener jingle in there somewhere).

At the end of my rant on how stereotypes - even good ones - can blind us as people and marketers, a participant asked, "Are you saying that there are no cultural differences?"

Hmmmm...a very good question, indeed.

Yes, there are cultural differences among people all over the world and even (and here's my point) among Americans. Even among Tampa residents. Even among those of use within USF. Even among those of us in the class last night.

It's always amazing to me when my Canadian, European or Asian friends comment about "Americans." Why do we drive Hummers? Why are we all so fat? Why are we all so selfish? Well, that's not quite right. Certainly it is a uniquely American fact that the Ford F-Series has been the best selling vehicle in the US for the last 10 years and outsold the best selling car, the Toyota Camry, 2:1 in 2003. However, if you assume all Americans are truck-driving fatties, how do you explain the success of the Toyota Prius, the Mini Cooper, the Scion? Well, Americans may be different than other cultures and our economic and tax policies may lead to very strange consumer behaviors, but we are all, in the end, unique. That's true of any country or any culture or ANYTHING.

The key to effective segmentation, targeting and positioning is delineating among buying segments based on attributes which we can create a distinct competitive advantage versus our competitors. What can we, as a collection of managers working for an entity, offer a given segment that no other group can? Those opportunities are not visible among stereotypes of consumers, countries or cultures. Opportunities to create a MEANINGFULLY differentiated value proposition rest on our true understanding of the target segment. Stereotypes almost never offer that verstehen.

Do cultural differences matter? Well, sure, in many ways. But opportunities to create superior value internationally do not exist in the stereotypes or aggregate statistical differences between Us and Them; opportunities for superior value creation exist in the true understanding (verstehen) of meaningful differences among people within a given market, country, culture.