Creating a Culturally Sensitive Marketing Strategy for Diffusion of Innovations Using Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of National Culture

Marketing incremental and radical innovations to consumers in different nations requires an understanding of the influence of their national culture, socioeconomic, and demographic variables (Everdingen & Warts, 2003). The innovation adoption process involves innovative and imitative consumer behavior (Rogers 1962, 2003; Bass, 1969; Norton & Bass, 1987). The consumer behavior of adoption of innovations can be predicted from their attitude towards the adoption, perceived behavioral control, social influence, and subjective norms, which are part of the national culture (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Ajzen, 1985, 1991). For multiple generations of the same product, innovation adoption and substitution occurs simultaneously. An integrated, multi-generation diffusion model has been developed that considers a dynamic market potential with a competitive relationship among generations and products (Kreng & Wang, 2013). The Hofstede framework of national culture is the most widely used cultural framework to explain the consequences of culture for global marketing, branding, and advertising (Hofstede, et al., 2010; Mooij & Hofstede, 2010, 2011; Rinnie & Fairweather, 2012). The purpose of this chapter is to summarize the current understanding about creating a culturally sensitive marketing intervention strategy including price, competition, and substitution for the diffusion of innovations using Hofstede’s six dimensions of national culture. Harish C. Chandan Argosy University, USA