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How Culture Affects Quality

In: Business and Management

Submitted By Njox
Words 3355
Pages 14
Discuss Culture and Quality

1.0 Introduction
As the world becomes more global each day, the borders among countries have started to disappear. The integration between nations highlights the importance of ‘culture’ in almost every aspects of human life. Today, people, companies and even governments shape and orient their acts correlated to this interaction process. Increased impact of national identity leads companies and marketers to build up unique strategies in order to be successful worldwide. The biggest reason of this is the different needs and expectations of people in different countries. Every culture has distinctive norms and values which have shaped the perception of customers for years.
Nowadays, the concept of perceived product quality is increasingly becoming more important on the minds. Although there are a lot of definitions, each of them are defined as common meaning; that is, quality is basically ability to meet the customer’s needs and expectations. Perception of quality varies from person to person and even from culture to culture. Therefore, the national identity and cultural values and norms might have an important role on the customers’ quality perception. Even if all the features and the prices of the product are same, it can create different opinions and perceptions in different countries and cultures.

How may culture affect the ‘product quality perception’ of consumers?

1.1 Culture
‘Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future’ - Albert Camus
Culture is a fundamental part of every society and can be defined as the learned pattern of behavior and everything which makes up a person’s entire way of living. Another very well-known definition for culture is written by Hofstede (Hollensen, 2004, p. 193) which says

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