When is a gift not a gift?
When it’s unwelcome of course!
And that’s the warning that western marketers should take heed of.

In the western commercial world, marketers often use pleasant surprises to influence consumers’ brand evaluations and purchasing decisions, but surprises are not always held to be pleaurable in some cultures. Marketing across cultures is a minefield and anyone in this line of business should be wary of different cultural responses to promotional gifts, especially the unexpected ones.

 However nice the gift may be, the surprise element can make some recipients feel uneasy – and its nothing to do with thoughts of bribery and corruption. East Asians genuinely feel their emotional balance has been disrupted because an unexpected gift indicates imbalance and prophesises bad fortune. People in the Nordic countries tend to feel suspicious. Americans, on the other hand, are delighted.

A new cross-cultural study of consumer response has recently been published which suggests that East Asians’ enjoyment of  ‘surprise’ gifts is much increased  when the gift is attiributable to luck.  So, for example, it is far more acceptable to have consumers enter a “Lucky Game” to win the gift. Undoubtedly, marketing activities across borders must accomodate cross-cultural differences.

 About the study: Ana Valenzuela, Barbara Mellers, and Judi Strebel. “Pleasurable Surprises: A Cross-Cultural Study of Consumer Responses to Unexpected Incentives.” Journal of Consumer Research: February 2010 (published online July 15, 2009).The authors conducted four studies in which participants received a gift as a token of appreciation for participating in a survey. Some of the participants knew about the gifts before participating, while others were surprised.

Being an interculturalist is one of the most fascinating professions –
you learn something new everday. Interestingly, I was speaking to an anthropologist friend of mine recently and learned that in her professions anthroplogists aren’t considered true anthropologists until they spend five years in the community that they study. As an interculturalist I can quite understand why that is…

 A nation is enriched by the people within it.  The more diverse they are the more we are enriched as a whole, and the more we grow as individuals. I firmly believe that cultural diversity is our biggest asset – but then how can it also be a liability? The answer really is simple – in trying to help people retain their cultural heritage or ethnic identity we manage to lose the message about UNITY.

UNITY is something we – as a nation – apparently strive for, but it’s the one goal we consistently fail to achieve. The UK Government searches desperately to identify what is “Britishness” so that it can bring a sense of belonging and UNITY to the nation. It has consistently failed to do so. I believe that is because, in spite of searching for our distinctive core values, they have not dug deep enough into the values of the nation and fundamentally do not understand about our Cultural Code.

Why is it that the French are very secure in who they are and why do Americans pride themselves on taking the oath of allegiance and flying the flag?  Why is it they seem to have UNITY – at least to the concept of nationhood – and we do not? That’s because they are French or American before they are anything else. 

A photographic competition promoting the cultural diversity and universal values of childhood is taking place to increase awareness of the health and living conditions of children around the world. The competiton which is being run by the International Vaccine Institute is open until August 12th.

In a recent documentary, Newt Gingrich states that American children are falling behind many other nations’ children in respect of their academic prowess.  He argues that they compare most unfavourably with Chinese and Indian children.  To add weight to this argument, a recent McKinsey report emphasises that the lagging performance of America’s school pupils, particularly its poor and minority children, is wreaking more devastation on the economy than the current credit crunch and recession.  American children, it seesms, are ill-equipped to compete and perform poorly in international educational test.

So, what seems to be the cause of this state of affairs? American academics put it down to ‘the summer learning loss’ over the long summer holidays and argue its exacerbating social inequalities. In addition to the longer summer holidays that the children receive, American kids seem to work fewer days in the year, have a shorter school day and only about an hour’s homework a night. Compared to European and Asian schedules, it appears that American kids lose out on 180 days of school (an entire year) over the course of their schooling.

On learning about a young Saudi boy not seeing his father for about ten months due to his dad’s busy international business schedule, I was rather saddened. However, I was surprised to learn from his mother’s comments that the poor lad was unlikely to have seen his father even if he were at home because he would have been busy with business commitments there.  This rather suggests that there is no room for fathers to develop strong emotional links with their children – or even their spouses.

I believe much of this goes back to the segregation of the sexes and the very conservative nature of Saudi families. Women and children of the family and extended family live together in a closed community. Children are unlikely to see their Saudi mother and father hugging, kissing or even holding hands. These are actions which typically take place in private with the husband and wife behind closed doors. This is very much unlike Western countries where affection is widely and broadly shown and demonstrated. A real cultural difference! The showing of affection is very much a part of our Western life and, nowaday, is seen as an important part of our emotional upbringing and well-being.  But my husband was brought up in an England where demonstrative affection between father and son was ‘not cricket’ – and that is not so many years ago. I’m glad our society has changed enough so that my husband feels able to show and tell his sons that he loves and cares for them. But I say that from the context of having a Dad who loved to be hugged and cuddled, as do I.

I know from a friend of mine, who worked as a governess for one of the Royal families in Saudi, that the male children of the household live with the women until almost puberty. This engenders a stronger bond between mothers and children than between fathers and their offspring. And, probably expalins why most of the Saudi gentlemen of my acquaintaince always claim that their wives rule the roost!  It would be unfair to say that this segregation leads mothers to be more emotionally attached to their children than their husbands, but as an armchair psychologist one might think so.  However, I refer back to my friend who said that the Prince and Princess were deeply in love and would spend as much time together as his busy scheduled and her household commitments allowed.

There’s no right or wrong – just difference. C’est la vie!

Undoutedly, events like 9/11, the London and Madrid bombings, along with the terrorist attacks in Mombai and the Philippines, to name just a few, have changed many attitudes towards other cultures and the peoples that live in some distant lands. Will conflict between civilisations be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world? Samuel Huntingdon argues that the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict, in this century, will be cultural – not ideological or economic as in the last century.

So what does this actually mean?  Well, let’s take a step back…