Cultural Differences and Marketers’ Response: Consumer Behavior Audit of A Leading Australian Household Brand

Abstract

Companies that are growing need to constantly watch out for new opportunities. Some of these opportunities can exist in new countries, in a different cultural setup. Product diversification and growth may demand a product to be introduced at a global level. To develop successful marketing strategy for such products, an organization must carefully comprehend the influence of culture to the organization’s potential customer base. Thus modern marketing efforts are mostly based on the analysis of consumer psychology and behavior. Similarly, putting Consumer Behavior Audit into the perspective, this study focuses on how cultural values affect marketing decisions of a highly successful consumer brand ‘OMO’. As “number One” brand for laundry products in Australia, OMO applied several marketing approaches that address the varied cultural orientation of Australian consumers. Understanding these cultural contexts has immensely helped OMO to maintain its strong foothold in the market. Going beyond, the results of the study show OMO has taken significantly different approach in Asian markets just because Asian countries have ominously different cultural perspective than that of Australia.  Consumer Brand Audit along with several theories around culture have been used in the study to draw the link between marketing techniques, cultural differences and people’s consumption pattern. This study can serve as a benchmark for the marketers who are working with international brands in varied cultural settings.

Keywords: Culture, OMO, Marketing Strategy, Australia, Consumers.