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Cultural Change and Counter Cultures

Dec 16, 2009

Sales/Marketing Management

The core values just discussed are not fixed or static, but instead are dynamicchanging elements of our culture. Cultural change may come about slowly in anevolutionary manner, or a culture may change rapidly, which tends to place morestress on the system. The marketer needs to understand that cultures do changeand to appreciate the implications this may have for consumer behavior. Forexample, when Stouffers realized that many grocery hoppers values were shiftingfrom a concern for belonging to the family and working as a servant for the family oa concern for self fulfillment and working for themselves, the company respondedto this social change. It introduced a line of frozen entrees positioned successfully

on the basis of self fulfillment with the theme Set your self free.

Changing Cultural Values in the United States:

In the book Mega trends 2000, author John Naisbitt predicts the ten most important

trends that will characterize the 1990s.

1) A renaissance in the arts, literature and spirituality2) The end of the welfare state and the death of socialism3) Emergence of English as the worldwide language4) Emergence of the Age of Biology and genetic engineering5) Shift from dominance of the Atlantic culture to the Pacific culture6) Decline of cities and growth of the electronic heartland

7) Worldwide free tradeNo limit to growth

9) Era of globalization

10) Human resources as our competitive edge.

As the world around us is transformed, American values are undergoing somemajor shifts. Opinion research sows that since the 1960s some fundamental andwidely shared cultural views have changed in the United States. Only 20 per cent ofthe public do not cling to the traditional values of hard work, family loyalty, andsacrifice. Thus, the marketer faces a situation in which new value trends coexistwith long standing values still deeply rooted in the country. This pluralism is one ofthe characteristics of our emerging society. Evidence of these changing patternsshow up among baby boomers. A survey conducted among those born between

1946 and 1964 produces a picture of a new brand of traditionalism: there is adistinct longing for more traditional values in some areas, values including hardwork, strong family and religious ties, and respect for authority, but these valuesare coupled with an increasing acceptance of non traditional ideas in other areas a tolerance of changing sexual morals and a desire for less materialism.

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The values cited above may be characteristic of intergenerational differences, butdifferences can also be found between various groups of the same age. Forexample, non-college youths appear to be about five years behind the college

population in adoption of new social values and moral outlooks.

One researcher categorizes three groups on the basis of their willingness for orprosperity to change whether cultural values or products. The vanguard makes up25 per cent of the marketplace. They are vocal, proactive, intense, curiousintolerant of the status quo, and searching for the new. They are creators ofattitude shifts in society. But they can be fickle and swing in other direction. Theadapters (35 per cent) who are generally less passionate than the vanguard arehard working solid citizens with deeply ingrained value systems. Once committed toa trend, this group stays behind it for a long time. The resigned (40 per cent) havevalue systems cast in stone: the group rarely changes from cradle to grave. Areusually geographically socially and intellectually immobile with limited curiosity and

great intolerance for change