Even with a loving partner you valued your independence and
invested in your own pension.
And look at you now.
Shopkeeper turned potter and just turned sixty.
We're proud to have helped.
In the US, we can see similar effects. Although "self-reliance" cannot be translated easily into many languages, it has been eulogized in American literature by such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Self-reliance is deeply ingrained in the average American from a very early age, and dependence is discouraged. Great emphasis is placed on personal growth and self-actualization.
Naturally, since independence and self-improvement are so deeply ingrained, advertising is often designed to appeal to this aspect of the culture. There is, for example, an advertisement that shows a man facing physical as well as mental challenges which ends by saying "Be all that you can be. Join the Army." Other well-known ads are the Marlboro commercials that show a cowboy on his horse, alone in the middle of the wilderness. The announcer invites the viewer to "come to Marlboro Country." The implied message is that in Marlboro Country, men are men and don't need anybody else. In more communitarian cultures, this type of advertising would probably not have much appeal, but in the US, it is quite effective.
THE DILEMMA BETWEEN SPECIFIC AND DIFFUSE
This dimension concerns the degree of involvement in relationships-the degree to which we engage others in specific areas of life and single levels of personality, or diffusely in multiple areas of our lives and at several levels at the same time.
Here we must determine what the customer's degree of involvement is. Do we see the customer as a punter, someone from whom we can make a fast buck, or is a customer the basis for an ongoing series of relationships over time?
In some cultures salespeople have to develop a relationship with potential customers before they can sell them anything. In France, for example, because the salesperson's relationship with the customer is personalized, that customer is more loyal to the salesperson than to the product. Consequently if the salesperson were to leave and to work for another company, customers would follow. In the US, in contrast, a salesperson's relationship with a customer is generally specific to their business dealings. Therefore anyone who has a convincing sales pitch will be an effective salesperson; because the US is a low context culture, the message is more important than the source of the communication. For this reason many American companies invest a lot of money in training. Sales training in the US generally emphasizes developing a strong sales pitch and dealing with the potential customer's considerations or objections.
This dimension can also be described as distinguishing between low and high context, which refers to the amount you must know about a culture or person before effective communication can take place. The context includes the amount of shared knowledge taken for granted by people when conversing, and the amount of reference to common ground. Figure 2.5 shows the relative orientation of a number of countries along this dimension.
Figure 2.5: Relative degree of specific-diffuse orientation for a number of selected countries
Not What was Said but the Way it Was Said
In comparing American with Japanese responses to television commercials, research has found that Americans paid most attention to the specific message itself, to what was communicated about the product. Japanese viewers were far more interested in the way the presenter spoke and the sincerity of the communication. They were influenced more by the overall feeling they experienced when they saw the commercial, valuing the diffuse aspects of the message.
The Role of the Sales Representative
Since relationships are specific in the Netherlands, the role of the sales representative is to establish good business relations with wholesalers and retailers. Provisional contracts, price policies, promotional materials, and advertising policies are all designed with a focus on building specific business relationships. Therefore if you expect a more diffuse type of business relationship in the Netherlands you may be disappointed. Nevertheless, if the Dutch can be convinced that financial gain is contingent upon establishing a more diffuse relationship, they will make an effort to do so.
Soft Selling
High-context cultures like Japan, with a great amount of shared information, tend to practice the "soft sell." However, Americans and Europeans in Japan frequently complain that they do not know what commercials are actually selling; the appeal is so indirect that only a fully informed member of the culture understands the connotation.
High-context communication can only really be illustrated by an example familiar to Americans... One day a king was returning to his palace with his hunting party when he saw a huge pair of yellow hands extended on either side of the narrow pass. If he rode between them, would they suddenly close? So he tapped a page boy on the shoulder. "Go between those hands," he said. The boy passed safely, as did the whole hunting party, and the moral of the story is: "Let your pages do the walking through the Yellow Fingers." To understand such a message you must already be aware of the original slogan: "Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages."
Japanese communications are between insiders. Department stores have rear projection films of waves, clouds, and seashores; products are not mentioned. The mood of beauty is enough.
Implicit is Better Than Explicit
Up front, "in-your-face" advertising does not work well in Ireland. The message or joke should not be immediately obvious. Irish consumers like to be entertained and kept guessing; they like to work out the message for themselves. A direct, forceful approach will not work as well as an indirect, understated, clever approach. Commercials work well when they appeal to the intelligence of the consumer to decipher the meaning but are not too obscure for people to figure out.
The Smirnoff vodka commercials are especially popular, as they cleverly combine humor, a sense of danger, surprise, excitement, and fantasy. There is always an innocuous scene, but the camera rolling in front of a clear Smirnoff bottle reveals an element of wildness or danger seen through it. For example, in one poster there is a flock of innocent-looking sheep, and in their midst, seen through the Smirnoff bottle, one of them is revealed as a wolf. Another Smirnoff poster shows a group of American warplanes flying in the sky with their noses painted to look like sharks. One plane, seen through the bottle, is seen to be really shark-like, as it has bitten the tail off the plane in front of it. A TV commercial shows a group of well-dressed people on a ship who, when seen through the Smirnoff bottle, turn out to be quite different: The smooth gentleman becomes a rough, sleazy-looking character, the prim lady becomes a vamp, and people who are running after each other become samurai warriors wielding meat cleavers. The commercials impress because they are technically clever, incorporate black humor, and include an element of surprise.
Escalating Reciprocity
Competitors in Japan and Southeast Asia are so formidable because they tend to develop relationships rather than simply develop themselves. While American suppliers will rarely behave so as to lose money on a specific contract, Japanese suppliers will sacrifice several contracts to build up a diffuse relationship with a customer they believe to be important.
Given norms of reciprocity and obligation in Japan a supplier who overfulfills his contract-or in other words, does more than what is specified in it-can expect to see next month's order doubled or quadrupled, in an attempt to repay his kindness. You are not expected to meet specifications, you are expected to surpass them; the more you do for your customer the more he will do for you, in a system of escalating reciprocity on both sides. Westerners then wonder why it is so hard to break into the Japanese market... It is hard to break into any relationship where A and B have "sacrificed" themselves to each other many times over.