<p>The concept of positioning was first highlighted by Trout and Ries in an article published in 1971 and has since then been a well-studied subject. However, little study has been made regarding the way the positioning strategy changes depending on which country the company is about to enter. The purpose of this master dissertation is thus to investigate culture’s role as a driving force in international positioning. </p><p>The theoretical framework consists of the foundations of the positioning process and international marketing literature about cross-cultural theories. These theories are put together in an analytical model where a connection between the two theories is illustrated that will be used as a foundation in gathering and analysing the empirical data. </p><p>In a qualitative approach, the empirical data was gathered through semi-structured telephone interviews with the Marketing Directors or a corresponding title of five different Swedish international companies. These findings were also complemented with secondary data such as web pages and annual reports of the companies.</p><p>The findings of the study showed that cultural differences are considered to some extent and have resulted to an entirely new positioning strategy for one of the researched companies and to changes in the strategic tools made for consolidating the position in two additional companies. In the two remaining companies, culture has not been a driving force and the companies have thus not considered this in their positioning in international markets.</p>

The concept of positioning was first highlighted by Trout and Ries in an article published in 1971 and has since then been a well-studied subject. However, little study has been made regarding the way the positioning strategy changes depending on which country the company is about to enter. The purpose of this master dissertation is thus to investigate culture’s role as a driving force in international positioning. The theoretical framework consists of the foundations of the positioning process and international marketing literature about cross-cultural theories. These theories are put together in an analytical model where a connection between the two theories is illustrated that will be used as a foundation in gathering and analysing the empirical data. In a qualitative approach, the empirical data was gathered through semi-structured telephone interviews with the Marketing Directors or a corresponding title of five different Swedish international companies. These findings were also complemented with secondary data such as web pages and annual reports of the companies. The findings of the study showed that cultural differences are considered to some extent and have resulted to an entirely new positioning strategy for one of the researched companies and to changes in the strategic tools made for consolidating the position in two additional companies. In the two remaining companies, culture has not been a driving force and the companies have thus not considered this in their positioning in international markets.

Standardisering och anpassning är två marknadsföringsstrategier som flitigt debatterats under decennier bland forskare. Begreppet standardisering innebär att ett företag väljer att utforma sin marknadsföring på samma sätt genom flera kanaler och på flera marknader. Tanken är att det ska vara samma budskap som når konsumenterna oavsett var på planeten de befinner sig. Anpassning är idén om att konsumenterna ter sig olika och har olika preferenser, vilket marknadsföringen bör anpassa sig till och därför skapa olika annonser till olika marknader. Tidigare forskning har pekat på att en förklaring till varför företag väljer att anpassa sin marknadsföring är kulturella aspekter och faktorer som särskiljer konsumenterna åt. Den tänkta konsumentens kultur är därför en viktig beståndsdel att beakta i ett företags val av marknadsföringsstrategi och det område som denna studien kommer att ha som fokus. Studiens syfte är att undersöka svenska företag som agerar på internationella marknader och huruvida de väljer att anpassa eller standardisera sin marknadsföring till olika länder. Vidare är syftet att gå djupare in på företagens val av anpassning för att analysera om företagen beaktar kulturella aspekter i sitt agerande på olika marknader. Frågeställningen utgår ifrån tidigare relevant teori och besvaras genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer utförda på personer med olika typer av ansvarsområden inom sex olika företag där svaren från intervjuerna ligger i grund för slutsatsen och resultatet. Resultatet från intervjuerna presenteras i en framtagen modell för att tydligt demonstrera företagens val av strategi och ifall dessa val beaktar kulturella aspekter när det kommer till dess marknadsföring. Slutsatsen i studien är att svenska företag som agerar internationellt oftast har en kombination av olika strategi och kan därför inte uteslutande kategoriseras in ett fack om standardisering eller anpassning. Studien visar på att kultur är en viktig aspekt i företagens strategier och då främst för de företag som agerar på en marknad långt bort från sin hemmamarknad. Ju längre avståndet från hemmamarknaden är, desto större skiljer sig dess konsumenter, vilket ställer högre krav på att anpassa sin strategi utifrån kulturella skillnader. Nyckelord: Anpassning, standardisering, cross-cultural marketing, marknadsföringsstrategi

In prevalent concept of marketing, brand culture is a static identification, treated as corporate prerogative which removed from culture and consumers. Generally marketers regard it as an emotional part of branding or a result of a constant branding. Hence, the conventional marketing provides the tools or principles for managers or marketers to conduct branding such as 4P, 7P, Brand Equity Model, etc., to reach high and rapid market share. With growth of diverse business environment and consumer behavior, brands only have long and deep relationships with consumers are more possible to be iconic and sustainable. It attracts people to actively access and to interplay with brand rather than just receive message from brand. In this study, the brand culture is specifically pointed out and seen as marketing approach especially in those brands which consumers will access for purpose of self-expression through consuming. The five dimensions help readers to look upon the important aspects in brand culture and how it works actively in marketing approach. From three multiple-case study: Harley-Davidson, Coca Cola and IKEA, the result shows the strong brand culture can be generated by cultural marketing in which the co-creation is developed and kept in cultural discourses. At the end, brand culture as marketing approach is helpful to review whole marketing strategy in consumer¡¦s perspective and improve the possibilities of increasing value in whole value chain.

This paper deals with Swedish B2B firms marketing activities in the culturally diverse Indian market, and what adaptations are made to meet the cultural diversity of India. The perception of cultural diversity in India is investigated from a Swedish B2B perspective. The findings were retrieved from three face to face interviews with equal number of respondents and firms; Roxtec, Norden Machinery and Gunnebo, three swedish B2B firms all established in India. The literature review is divided in two categories; Marketing and Culture, the former containing theory on relationship marketing and adaptation vs standardization when designing a marketing strategy, and the latter models of national culture as well as models on multicultural countries, with the models applied on India. The dimensions of culture that we found were most relevant in this paper were Power Distance and Perception of Time. The literature review is concluded with a conceptual framework containing our main concepts. The results from this study suggest that it is the managing of relationships with customers that are the most important part of marketing in India. It was also found that while India is characterized as a multicultural country, the way business is conducted and relationships managed are similar all over this vast country, leading us to suggest that a mutual Indian business culture exists.

In this study, the Cultural Marketing is directly associated to the term which expresses the patronage polices of public funding for culture, where it is assumed that both the coordination between state, private and the field of cultural producers as the goals of the funding. Tax incentives are part of the financing system and constitute an instrument of government to direct and encourage the presence of private resources and strategic segments. This work is basically composed of two distinct parts. In the first part delimit the conceptual field, passing by a brief historical background, trying to identify from empirical trends Patronage in Brazil, and by drawing the guidelines of the cultural policies during the period of democratization in Brazil. The second part presents some of the main sponsors of the culture in Brazil, values and forms of investment, covering the period from 2008 and the presentation of the major steps required in developing a Cultural Project. / Nesse estudo, o Marketing Cultural está associado diretamente ao termo Mecenato que expressa a política de financiamento público para a cultura, onde supõe-se tanto a coordenação entre agentes estatais, privados e o campo dos produtores culturais quanto os objetivos do financiamento. Os incentivos fiscais são parte do sistema de financiamento e se constituem em instrumento do poder público para direcionar e estimular a presença de recursos privados em segmentos estratégicos. Assim, este trabalho está composto basicamente por duas partes distintas. Na primeira parte, delimita-se o campo conceitual, passando-se por uma breve contextualização histórica, procurando-se identificar, a partir de bases empíricas, as tendências do Mecenato no Brasil, e traçando-se as diretrizes da política cultural implementada durante o período de redemocratização brasileira. Na segunda parte, são apresentadas algumas das principais empresas patrocinadoras da cultura no Brasil, os valores e as formas de investimentos, relativo ao período de 2008, bem como a apresentação das principais etapas necessárias na elaboração de um Projeto Cultural.

Background, Problem Statement and Gap - Political agendas informed by the negative impacts of increasing consumption (including fashion consumption) have allocated major parts of the responsibility to contribute to sustainable development to individual consumers. These agendas subsequently highlighted the need to provide more information, including through media and social media, about the negative impacts of fashion consumption - and consumption at large - to the consumer. Within our paper, this depicted approach, which is sometimes criticized by scholars, is conceptualized as ‘Consumer Responsibilization’ and viewed through the theoretical lens of discourse. However, despite consumers having increased access to information, products, and services related to sustainability and sustainable fashion (SF), changes of consumption habits are stagnant. This phenomenon, which is a serious problem hindering sustainable development, is widely defined as the knowledge-to-action-gap (KAG) within the literature. Scholars whose studies were limited to the offline world have criticized Consumer Responsibilization and have linked this approach to the KAG. There exists a gap in knowing which role the social media platform Instagram, plays for the Consumer Responsibilization approach in SF communications and it’s potential to expedite the KAG. Consumption from the perspective of culture is understood in this research as socially integrated, complex, and not always rational. Purpose - Our research purpose is to fill the identified gap and investigate the Consumer Responsibilization discourse on Instagram used within SF communications. We want to find out which actors are taking advantage of this discourse, the way it is represented and how users of Instagram react. We also investigate how the unique affordances of Instagram and its potential as a site for discourse affect the discourse in question and could influence the KAG. Method - Multimodal discourse is the theoretical perspective used to detect and understand the representation of consumer responsibilization on Instagram. Meaning that we, informed by literature, see discourse as not only communicated through entities of text but also through other semiotic elements called modes. We adopted a culturalist perspective situated within qualitative marketing research and followed passive and immersive netnographic procedures, whereby ethnographic approaches are adapted to observe social media data. Our ontological and epistemological framing of this research is within interpretivism and constructivism, as we acknowledge that our role as researchers involves constructing meaning through subjective analysis. Through exploratory and iterative understanding, we followed abductive logic and hermeneutic philosophy to produce knowledge. We followed exploratory and selective sampling to find publicly accessible Instagram posts that used SF-related hashtags and communicated Consumer Responsibilization. Triangulation developed through the quantification of follower counts, likes and comments, reinforced patterns in our findings. Additionally, each researcher contributed an immersion journal of rich descriptions of our experiences navigating Instagram as users. Through multimodality, all the different elements of a post were analyzed as contributors to the discourse (e.g., text, image, and engagement). An iterative combination of Descriptive coding, Initial coding and Axial coding were applied for analysis and synthesis of themes from patterns that emerged in the data (Saldaña, 2009). Findings - Consumer Responsibilization discourse is being represented by SF communications on Instagram by various actors, through posts following the logic of rationalization, sharing call to actions, compelling imagery and self-auditing tools (such as checklists or bullet-point step-by-step guides). We identified categories of prominent account types, namely individuals or groups of individuals with the status of Opinion Leaders, Brands/Businesses, NGOs / Activist Organizations, and News or Media accounts. The majority of collected posts address consumers with a call to action to contribute to SF, through multimodal elements, and they follow either an Information Approach, Activism / Charity Approach or Consumption Approach with their suggested actions. According to the literature, Instagram's unique affordances as a social media platform favors visual content, which is deemed more effective with persuasion and gaining attention among users (Laestadius, 2016; Russman and Svensson, 2016; Schroeder and Borgerson, 2005). While we found patterns of visual communication which are typical of an account type, there are other patterns of engagement from users observed throughout the data which indicate the tone and intended message of a post influences the public’s response. Discursive polyphony and confusion, terms coined by Markkula and Moisander (2012), seem to arise from varying conflicting messages and SF principles, highlighting the ambiguity of SF discourse. This can, according to Markkula and Moisander (2012), be a contributor to KAG. Our data, based on the responses found in the comments, hints towards users experiencing feelings of conflict and confusion when being confronted with the different SF discourses. Users typically respond to SF posts framed by Consumer Responsibilization and rationalization with resistance, defensiveness, justification, support, gratitude, criticism, or skepticism. While reacting to SF discourses, users also replicate and further contribute to them. Practical implications and Theoretical limitations - Our thesis contributes to research of cultural forces that contribute to KAG, by locating our observations from Instagram, which is a compelling site to observe SF discourse. Previous research in this field has been conducted offline, with primary input from consumers, whereas our research gathered deep cultural insight from secondary data posted publicly online. As such, our findings are limited by users who post publicly not being representative of the public who are not active on Instagram, are unfamiliar with SF discourses or have set their accounts to be private. Our findings contribute to cultural marketing and SF research and elaborates on criticisms of Consumer Responsibilization. In future campaigns, social media managers, marketing managers and policy makers must consider the complex, overlapping and contradicting messages with SF discourse, and how they contribute to KAG. Discursive confusion, few suggestions of manageable solutions, and limited scope of information are risks to worsening the KAG. Our findings indicate that consumers also require public support from businesses and governments to tackle collective systemic issues.

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With more than 33 million people living with HIV/AIDS, and an infection rate that is increasing rather than falling among high-risk groups, the 30-year history of the AIDS epidemic has been characterised as ‘islands of success in a sea of failure.’ Given the lack of a medical cure for the disease, the world has looked to social marketing campaigns to promote behaviour change that would decrease infection rates. Under the best of circumstances, change is difficult, and health behaviour change, especially when it relates to sex and politics, is even more challenging, so social marketers have a difficult task that calls on every technique at their disposal. There is an increasing expectation that HIV/AIDS social marketing interventions will yield measurable results, and that involves fully understanding the AIDS landscape, marketing theory and practice, and the evolving medical picture relating to the pandemic. This research explores links between social marketing and HIV/AIDS while mapping their marketing connections to both the conventional and alternative medical communities. To better understand the HIV/AIDS landscape, early research focused on three diverse countries— Mexico, Uganda, and the United States—selected for their significant cultural, economic, and political differences. Given the multiple social perspectives and fields of knowledge involved in this project, a transdisciplinary approach using mixed research methods was selected. Mixed methods for collecting and presenting data included case studies, content analysis, semistructured interviews, a quantitative survey, and in-depth reaction interviews. Through analysis of 18 social marketing campaigns in the three countries selected for study, the content, focus, purpose, and implications of the controlled public dissemination of HIV/AIDS information were examined. Key informants with professional and academic credentials in the areas of marketing, advocacy, and HIV/AIDS medicine were interviewed to learn rationales behind the campaigns and to explore political and economic factors that affect HIV/AIDS health activism. The last major phase of information gathering surveyed more than 340 patients at a clinic in Houston, Texas, to ascertain their knowledge and perceptions about HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention information. After the survey data was compiled, reaction interviews from key informants provided additional input. Informed by this wealth of secondary and primary research, an Integrated Social Marketing Conversation (Marcon) Model was created to demonstrate that social marketing campaigns should be localised and customer centred, with participants engaging in an ongoing conversation at every stage. The communication model offers valuable guidelines for more effective dissemination of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment information to high-risk, high-interest target audiences such as HIV-positive people and the organisations that work with that subculture. Because this research crosses so many boundaries and addresses an actual need, it should be of interest to a wide variety of individuals and organisations in both academic and professional fields. From marketers to medical practitioners to activists associated with HIV/AIDS issues, this project’s findings will apply to their concerns. Also, HIV/AIDS organisations — both government agencies as well as private groups — should find information in this work that addresses their ongoing efforts. While investigating existing models for HIV/AIDS communication, it became evident that most research and communication models have focused on how HIV/AIDS prevention programmes are working and what is effective, but little has been done in regards to treatment options and information. For that reason, the integrated social marcon model presented in this thesis is an important addition to the body of practical literature on this topic. Finally, the volatility of the issues examined here and the contacts made during five years of work offer multiple possibilities for follow-up research and fieldwork with opportunities to make a positive contribution in the battle against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The main goal of this diploma thesis is to create a base of marketing strategy of Berg Orchestra, because of focusing on new target group of younger audience. Theoretical part describes marketing of orchestras and specifics of marketing mix, then issues of segmentation, targeting and positioning. This part also focuses on marketing research, especially on quality research, which is used in practical part of this thesis. Practical part introduces Berg Orchestra, its aims, marketing and analysis through SWOT. Then it offers the quality research itself and in-depth interviews with nine respondents. At the end of this part there is an approximate framework of new marketing strategy with suggestions coming from the applied research.