Cross-Cultural Management: Impacts of Culture on Beer Advertising in Hong Kong

1.0 Title

            The working title is initially drafted as – Impacts of Culture on Beer Advertising in Hong Kong. Basically, the report explores how culture affects the process of advertising beer in Hong Kong context. Hong Kong is one of the two special administrative regions of China which is often described as East meets West because of the mixture of Chinese roots and influences from the British Empire.

2.0 Introduction

The existence a “community-specific factors and their absence in other cultures” (Dagut, 1981) challenges the companies and advertising agencies. Advertisers can translate concepts and then explain the content of advertisement. In some cases, the advertisement can be substituted with another concept that will still have a similar effect and response. In order to achieve the same message in the target language or market, cultural elements must be translated properly to get the equivalent response. The message of the advertisements must be acceptable to the norms of the culture in a certain level of equivalence or correspondence (Toury, 1980). The translation of the message in a different language and the use of specific word for a certain product in a particular culture is a form culture translation (Bezuidenhout, 1998). However, the process f translating ideas may ruin the existing morals, values and beliefs of a particular culture.  These can influence the message and its perception in a wider sense.

Further, it is said that in a competition, “those who best persuade are those most likely to win” (O’shaugnessy & O’Shaugnessy, 2003).  The effectiveness of advertising through persuasion must be conformed to social norms, values and valued images. The persuasive advertisements need to grab the attention of the receivers either by conventional or unpredictable approach suggesting appropriate actions. People are more likely to respond to situations and ideas that are of their cultural orientation. Cultural elements in persuasive advertising can be understood through its signification and meaning of the target culture (Bezuidenhout, 1998).

Having said all of these, how a beer manufacturing companies can possibly persuade Hong Kong consumers considering the influences of cultural elements in the consumption decision-making process is not known. It is the goal of this report to investigate how cultural elements situate itself in beer advertising particularly among Hong Kong nationals.

3.0 Methods

The report made use of an archival, library-research method. Contents from published articles in books and journals are collected. The sources of the secondary data included books and journals, theses and related studies, official statistics, and magazines and newspapers. Internet databases were also consulted including Questia, Highbeam and Emerald. Interpretation was conducted which can account as qualitative in nature. Boolean technique is used as a key data collection method.

After gathering empirical data, contextual or thematic content analysis of the literatures was adopted. Contextual analysis refers to the method of analysing the contents of literature and research and identifies how the themes relate to the study. Qualitative data analysis was used to collect relevant themes from the analyzed data and categorize them accordingly. From those themes, the study developed insights regarding the subject. This type of analysis is highly inductive as the themes emerge from data and are not imposed by the researcher or evaluator.  

4.0 Results

In 1970s the demand of the Hong Kong nationals towards beer had grew forcefully. That is due to the fact of the import of the labor from the mainland China. Unfortunately, by 1980s, the economy of Hong Kong had begun to succeed and helped the Hong Kong nationals to become more educated as well as wealthy; eventually it had helped to drop the ration of the blue-collar workers.  The said event had affected the beer industry in Hong Kong, that had lead to a slow and no growth at all (cited in Speece & Kawahara 1994, p. 10).

The per capita consumption of beer of the Hong Kong nationals is comparatively low when compares to the standards of the Western people (see appendix 1 for the comparison). In 1992, the average consumption of beer of the Hong Kong nationals has reached 29.8 liters. The said demand for beer had decrease compare to its demand from 1990 that ranges from 28 to 35 liters (cited in Speece & Kawahara 1994, p. 11).

The buying behavior of the customers towards beer depends on occasions as well as to the brand of the beer. Tsingtao beer is considered as the lowest of them all, tourists are just availing the said beer in order to feel and experience the real China. On the other hand Carlsberg that is made in Denmark is considered as the beer of the bar as well as the beer of the night. It is belong to the social rank that is higher from San Miguel (Matthews & Lui 2001, p. 122).

San Miguel Beer is considered as the mediocre beer, meaning it does not belong to the lowest social status, or the upper class. Beer is considered as part of the life of the Hong Kong nationals. It generally perceived as the cheap brand. Primarily, it can be said that San Miguel is one of the most affected beer brand in Hong Kong, by the affluence of the Hong Kong nationals. It had slowly but steadily lost its market share in Hong Kong (cited in Speece & Kawahara 1994, p. 11).

According to the study that was conducted by Speece & Kawahara (1994), the blue-collar respondents are the one who drinks most per in a month. Unfortunately, it also had showed that their average of 12.5 bottles or can per month is not sufficient to stand for high consumption. In addition to that, it had also showed that the professionals or those respondents who are from the upper management had reported to consume about 9.4 bottles or cans in a month, 7.9 for the white collars or those clericals and 4.1 for the students (p. 13).

5.0 Discussion

            The primary marketing strategy that has been applied by the beer companies to their relationship with their customer is their ability to act as local, where in the customers had been able to feel that the beer companies has originated or owned by their country. Another important thing is that the beer companies also use the settings and the culture of the Hong Kong national in creating and implementing their different marketing strategies such as their advertisement. Beer companies are still targeting their customers by means of the traditional culture of the country. The commercial of the products pertains to the local and familiar settings that evolved in the culture of the Hong Kong nationals. In addition to that, it also uses clear narrative storylines (Matthews & Lui 2001, p. 123).

Beer companies had been able to had famous people or personalities to represent their brand, for example is the hilarious television advertisement of Stephen Chow that shows the sensuality of a girl, at the same time, bringing out the sense of humor of Stephen Chow (See appendix C for the preview of the TV ad). The campaign had been launched via the way of print, outdoor, the direct marketing as well as the activation executions (Yin 2007). The beer companies had also changed their tagline from Come Together With San Miguel Beer to Camaraderie like No Other (Yin 2007).

In addition to the said strategy, the beer companies are also into sponsorship and other related strategy. They are engaging into different gigs and celebration in order to show or they represent their products to their customers.

Another important marketing technique of the beer companies is their pricing. San Miguel beer is considered as one of the cheapest brands of beer in Hong Kong. It had been a great help for the beer companies since it can be availed by those consumers who are into blue-collar job or those who belong to the lower level of management. Unfortunately, the said strategy had caused the beer companies some disadvantages, and that is due to the fact that price of beer had caused to create a social status division among the brands of the beer. It had affected the image of the brand, due to the major change of the standard of living in Hong Kong.

6.0 Conclusion

            In sum, changes on the preferences of beer consumption are culture-related. It had been affected by the major force which is the culture change due to the improvement of living in the said country. The said change had affected the overall image of the product, therefore had affected the sales and demands of the said brand.

7.0 References

Bezuidenhout, I. 1998, A discursive-Semiotic Approach to Translating Cultural     Aspects in Persuasive Advertisements.

Dagut, M. 1981, Semantic ‘voids’ as a problem in the translation process, Poetics Today, Vol. 2, No. 4.

Matthews, G. & Lui, T. 2001. Consuming Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

O’Shaugnessy, J. & O’Shaugnessy, N. 2003, Persuasion in Advertising, Routledge

Speece, M., Kawahara, Y. & Stella, L. M. 1994. Imported Beer in the Hong Kong Market, British Food Journal, 96, 1, pp. 10-18.

Toury, G. 1980, In search of a theory of translation, Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute or Poetics and Semiotics.

Yin, S. 2007, August 22. Brand Republic, Media Asia.