During the last decade, cell phone has diffused rapidly through Indian society.
While this cell phone boom has provided ample opportunities for the Indian businessmen to propagate development communication messages, there has also been some concern regarding the impact of cell phone, especially blackberry advertising, on traditional cultural. The purpose of the present paper is to examine Indian cell phone advertising, focusing on the influence of cultural on cell phone advertising. A brief prescription on Indian culture is provided. Then apply differences culture on details. Results of the study indicate that several aspects of Culture may have impact on the Cell phone Advertising and make the decisions of the customers’ behavior.
The culture Environment in India With nearly 1 billion citizens, India is the second most populous nation in the world. It is impossible to speak of any one Indian culture, although there are deep cultural continuities that tie its people together. Indian culture is rich and diverse and as a result unique in its very own way. Their manners, way of communicating with one another, etc are one of the important components of their culture.
Even though they have accepted modern means of living, improved their lifestyle, their values and beliefs still remain unchanged. A person can change his way of clothing, way of eating and living but the rich values in a person always remains unchanged because they are deeply rooted within their hearts, mind, body and soul which they receive from their culture. Language Language can cause communication problems – especially in the verbal communication when operate an advertising. It is best to learn the language or engage someone who understands it well. India is the home of many languages. India is a vast country with lot of cultural and geographical diversities.
There are a number of languages spoken in India. Some of these languages are accepted nationally while others are accepted as dialects of that particular region. The foreign intrusions have left an impact on the Indian local languages. English language, the legacy of the British rule in India, became the commonly used official language of India.
The eighth schedule of the Indian constitution recognizes 22 languages. All these languages have evolved from the great language families drawn from history. The major ones to make an influence are the Aryan and the Dravidian. They have influenced each other and have, in turn, been influenced by the Austeric and Sino-Tibetan tongues. The Indian Constitution declares Hindi to be the official language of the Union.
Hindi is also the mother tongue of about 20% of the Indian population in the area known as the ‘ Hindi-belt’ or the ‘ cow-belt’ of northern India. This includes the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand / Uttaranchal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh and Rajasthan. Haryana and Himachal Pradesh also have Hindi as their official language. Like the other languages of the north, Hindi is of Indo-Aryan origin. But in south India, it’s quite a different scene altogether.
The Dravidian languages bear little resemblance to their Indic or Indo-Aryan counterparts. Languages Of India Assamese A language of Assam that’s spoken by nearly 60 percent of the State’s population. Bengali An official language of West Bengal, now spoken by nearly 200 million people in West Bengal and in Bangladesh. Bodo Assam Dogri Jammu and Kashmir Gujarati It is the official language of Gujarat. 0 percent of the State’s population speak Gujrathi but it the most spread language not only in India but also abroad. Hindi The official language of India, accent and dialect differs with different regions but almost every Indian has a working knowledge of Hindi.
It is written in a Devanagiri script. Kannada A language of Karnataka and is spoken by 65 percent of the state’s population. It belongs to the Dravidian family. Kashmiri Though the language is mistaken as a state language of Kashmir only 55 per cent of the state’s population speak Kashmiri. Konkani Goa, Karnataka, MaharashtraMaithili Bihar Malayalam The state language of Kerala. It is the youngest of all developed languages in the Dravidian family.
Manipuri/Meitei Manipur Marathi An official language of Maharashtra. It has a fully developed literature of the modern type. Nepali Sikkim, West Bengal Oriya A branch of the Indo-Aryan family, is the official language of the State of Orissa. Punjabi The official language of the State of Punjab.
It is written in Gurmukhi script, created by the Sikh Guru, Angad. Sanskrit The classical language of India that has lost it’s value in the modern world. It is also one of the oldest languages in the world- perhaps the oldest to be recorded. All the ancient scripts are found to be written in the same language.
Santhali Santhal tribals of the Chota Nagpur Plateau (comprising the states of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa) Sindhi Is spoken by a great number of people in the Northwest frontier of the Indian sub-continent comprising parts of India and Pakistan. Tamil The State language of Tamil Nadu. Tamil literature goes back to Centuries before the Christian era and is spoken by more than 73 million people. It belongs to the Dravidian language family. Telugu A language of Andhra Pradesh. It is numerically the biggest linguistic unit in India.
Urdu The state language of Jammu and Kashmir and is spoken by more than 28 million people in India. Urdu and Hindi have proceeded from the same source. Urdu is written in the Persio – Arabic script and contains many words from the Persian language. “ Hingliish” In India’s major cities, you don’t need to look far to see signs of the growing influence of Western culture and lifestyles. Hinglish’ advertising, which incorporates a mix of Hindi and English text, has proven to be both amusing and effective in boosting sales of goods and services.
‘ Glocalisation’ of Advertising in India – Hinglish is a language of choice. The Hindi and English language will influence on the advertising in India. On positive side, using the Hinglish will bring about more focuses, because of the amount of information we get from our daily lives. Cell phone advertising must be localization with the market and people, so as a advertising project in India, we have to find the property verbal communications on our advertising.
Like Hinglish is a good way to express the local people who want and needs the cell phone and let the Blackberry Bold (our product) into their lives. Nonverbal Communication We communicate not only through spoken language but also through nonverbal language. Indeed, it has been estimated that approximately 70 percent of all communication between two individuals within the same culture is nonverbal in nature. A sign system is representation through communication which in turn leads to a shared meaning or understanding. As advertising surrounds consumers, concern is often expressed over the impact on society, particularly on values and lifestyle. While a number of factors influence the cultural values, lifestyles, and behavior of a society, the overwhelming amount of advertising and its prevalence in the mass media suggests that advertising plays a major role in influencing and transmitting social values.
The media must be aware of the connotations of words and symbols used in their messages and understand how advertising copy and slogans are translated. Advertisers can also encounter problems with the connotative meaning of signs and symbols used in their messages. However within a given culture there are found smaller groups or segments, whose variables set them apart from the larger cultural mainstream. We consider the nonverbal communications are gestures, symbols, colors, time symbolism, and polycbronic time. All of them will have the influence on advertising.
For example, our product is Blackberry Bold, a new style with strong features cell phone. And the advertising may conclude the symbols and colors which make the Indians more impressions and more stimulation to buy the product. After we segment the market and have a target positioning, we use the color, symbols, and many of the nonverbal communications to decide our advertising. Avoid the uncertainty and negative or misunderstanding gestures and symbols. Culture Values To maximize the chances of success, marketers must examine cultural values.
Milton rokeach provides a classic definition of a value:” an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end state of existence is personally and socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end state of existence”. For example, the instrumental value of “ loving” means affectionate and tender. The degree to which consumers perceive themselves as affectionate may differ from one culture to the next, and this may have implications for promotional efforts. An enhanced upscale version of the Blackberry mobile phone will soon be introduced by the Research In Motion Ltd or RIM, targeting the niche consumers in the business segment. The company, however, hopes that the chic Blackberry device also catches the attention of others in the retail market.
The new smartphone has been christened as the BlackBerry Bold and is the first BlackBerry device to sustain high-speed HSDPA cellular networks. It also boasts of integrated GPS, Wi-Fi and a multitude of other multimedia features. The launch of BlackBerry Bold marks the beginning of a new era in business mobility in India. Crafted from premium materials inside and out, the BlackBerry Bold smartphone is the first BlackBerry smartphone to support tri-band HSDPA high-speed networks around the world, providing superior functionality and performance for business professionals and power users. Values are broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others, and typically embody contrasts (what is good versus what is evil, what is beautiful versus what is ugly).
The impressions how the Indians business people considered the most critical appeal on the new Blackberry Bold come from their own values without the product itself but the general abstract view on the attitude. If we want to sell these cell phones to the Indian business people, we will choose the properly colors and figures that can show the equal imaginations and symbols to the successful meaning. That is how value will influence to the advertisement. Religion Religion is central to Indian culture, and its practice can be seen in virtually every aspect of life in the country.
Hinduism is the dominant faith of India, serving about 80 percent of the population. Ten percent worship Islam, and 5 percent are Sikhs and Christians; the rest (a good 45 million) are Buddhists, Jains, Bahai, and more. Getting knows about the religion in India, our advertisement will avoid some irrelevant connections between religion and economy. Religion can be holidays, people behaviors, and traditional customs. Religion holidays like Thanksgiving in United State, people will enjoy their turkey dinner and spend money on lots of sales and gifts. Knowing one of these features of the religion culture, advertising can be more successful.
Customer Behavior All the prominent elements of culture—including verbal language, nonverbal communications, signs and symbols, needs and values, religion, and customs—as they impact consumer behavior. The culture of a society affects the kinds of products that are consumed as well as when and how they are consumed, by whom they are purchased and consumed, and how much is consumed. The consumer behavior is like the psychology of the consumer. The psychology of how consumers think, feel, reason, and select between different alternatives (e. . , brands, products); The psychology of how the consumer is influenced by his or her environment (e.
g. , culture, family, signs, media); The behavior of consumers while shopping or making other marketing decisions; Limitations in consumer knowledge or information processing abilities influence decisions and marketing outcome; How consumer motivation and decision strategies differ between products that differ in their level of importance or interest that they entail for the consumer; and how marketers can adapt and improve their marketing campaigns and marketing strategies to more effectively reach the consumer. A topic “ BlackBerry Bold Going GSM in India” says RIM along with Reliance Communications have announced the launch of the BlackBerry Bold for Reliance Communications GSM customers in India. When asked to comment, RIM’s Co-CEO Jim Balsillie, said: “ Reliance Communications and Research In Motion have been working together losely to bring the many benefits of the BlackBerry solution to their CDMA customers in India and I am now extremely pleased to say that we will jointly serve their GSM customers as well.
The new BlackBerry Bold smartphone, with its global connectivity capabilities and advanced communications and multimedia features, offers customers a truly liberating mobile experience that we believe will be very well received by customers in India. ”
