Yes, marketers have the capacity to change cultural values if at all the marketing process is applied the right way. How can they achieve this? Marketers are responsible for introducing new products and services in a given society. Though the cultural values of a given group of people may be a hurdle to the marketers at first, a correct understanding of the values and the people at hand may be used to the benefit of the marketers and the people in question. Correct marketing that involves promoting and educating the targeted audience about the new product or service is the best way forward. The product/service being marketed should also deliver the promotion pledges.
A good marketing strategy should be applied that involves studying the target market, the existing cultural values of that society, and identifying the most suitable method of penetrating the market. This should be done variably, one being by assimilating the product/service with the culture without expecting an immediate change in the cultural values of that society. Another method that can be utilized is outright campaigning against a set of values and, at the same time proposing another set of values that supports the marketing and adoption of the product/service that is being marketed. One of the most popular ways is instilling fear to the consumers highlighting the disadvantages or dangers of a particular cultural value that the society embraces by comparing it with the marketer’s proposed good or service-driven value that is supposed to perform better than the former.
The strength of the brand name determines a lot on how the marketer’s attempt to change the cultural values of that society will perform and the reception it gets from the target market. A recent case of campaigning against a cultural practice is the global campaign by marketers and some non-governmental organizations against genetically modified foods wherein their campaigns were quoting the dangers of the genetically modified foods pitting them against the benefits of the naturally grown ones. Society is now more informed about looming dangers in continuous use of what they were consuming previously change and a new cultural value of being more health-conscious immediately put in place.
Consumption Rituals
A consumption ritual can be said to be a type of expressive symbolic activity consisting of multiple behaviors that occur in a fixed episodic sequence that tend to be repeated over time, either annually, weekly, monthly, or seasonally. Rituals may be conducted within a religion, community, family, country, or by a group of people with a common relationship or interests. Within a consumption ritual that applies to a particular group, there exists a ritual behavior that is dramatically scripted and is acted out and performed with the formality and intensity set by the members. For instance, Christians and non-Christians alike all over the world have come to appreciate the Christmas season as the period of giving loved ones presents and family or group reunions.
What this has done to marketers is to give them an opportunity to market their wares with a Christmas connotation. All consumption rituals are an expression of something that runs deeper than the mere consumption itself. The intensity of all consumption rituals is always aggravated by marketers bent on making a kill at these rituals with the knowledge that they do not happen on an everyday pattern.