London 2012 is the biggest Paralympic Games yet!

This year's Paralympics are unmissable.

4280 athletes are taking part from 166 different countries. Examples of countries competing for the first time in Paralympics are Antigua, Albania, and San Marino. Over the next 11 days the Paralympic Games will be held in 19 different venues all around London.

Many have spoken, in the media, that London 2012 is Paralympic Games “coming home.” This is because it was in London, on the day of the opening of the 1948 Summer Olympics, that the first organized event for disabled athletes was held. These first games, called the Wheelchair Games, were held for British World War II veteran patients with spinal injuries. Four years later, in 1952, in the same location, Dutch veterans participated as well, making 1952 the first year for an organised, international competition for disabled athletes. The Paralympic Games, as we know it today, was held for the first time in 1960 in Rome. This was the first year that the Paralympic Games were not solely open to war veterans. In Rome, that year, 400 athletes from 23 different countries took part.

The term Paralympic derives from the Greek word ‘para,’ which means ‘alongside.’ Paralympic refers to a competition that’s held alongside the Olympics…

If you want to do international business on the web, consider the impact of culture on the understanding, interpretation, and use of your web-site. Things like colour, content, language, and even the tools we use are not accepted around the world in the same way – there are cross cultural differences. Here are just a few things to consider:

For the first time in the whole history of the world we face the phenomenon of, not just globalisation, but CULTURAL GLOBALISATION. But does it really exist and, if so, so what?

Undoubtedly cultural values and identities are being shaped and reshaped with the media playing a significant role in our daily lives. Many of our ideas about the world, our understanding of what is happening everyday and, it can be argued, even our values come from beyond our personal experience – they are formed by what we see and hear via the media.

We receive ideas about the world as ‘packaged’ or ‘bite-sized’ versions of events and issues straight from the media and we just know this has a strong influence on individuals and ultimately society as a whole. With the spread of the media to even remote places on the planet, its influence brings out important issues concerning the affect on national or local cultures and their responses. Young people of the MTV generation around the world probably have more in common with each other than with their parents. But MTV reflects the attitudes and values of western countries, especially America, and is argued to be contributing to the homogenisation of global culture – which, according to research, is expanding rapidly.

Cultural globalisation is a result of the economic activites in developed countries of news and entertainment – the media that produce televison programmes, music and movies and distribute them across the world. This happens because THEY can, whilst other nations can’t. American dominance in this respect is uppermost because of a powerful economy and because of the English language. Even the statistics on book translations shows the number of American books translated from English far out weighs those being translated into English. However, this American dominance would not have come about without the economic power of the big corporations.

In some countries, American television constitues 50% of the programs as the host country does not have the resources to fund the cost of production and distribution of their own. Expensive, blockbuster American movies have been a dominant force but are seen to represent ‘a type of homogenous, uniform culture permeated by western capitalistic values… full of elaborate technical effects and focus on stunts, action, and violence instead of character and emotion’.  Undoubtedly, action movies are more easily understood in non-English speaking , diverse cultures  – in other words they can travel.

To a large extent CULTURAL GLOBALISATION is happening by default – because of econimc advantage. That of the US.  However, all is not lost. India has become the world’s leading producer of fiction films, with Bollywood circulating films to Indian Asia, Indian Africa and the UK. France, too, has retained a strong film industry which has received Government subsidies.

If Cultural Globalisation is an accident of econmic power then we can argue that as other countries rise in economic power Westernisation or Americanisation will lessen and the world will be treated to a greater variety of media input.

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.