Use the Culture to Your Advantage

Culture is all around us and it is embedded into our society. Our society and our culture

drives not only our thoughts, our perceptions on life, but as well as our behaviors. As marketers

in order to achieve the ultimate results, we must think as a consumer. We must take a look into their shoes and what factors drives them to make the purchasing decisions that they do. If we are able to manipulate these factors we can then influence the purchasing decision process that our consumers go through. Using the peoples culture to our advantage can we then market our ideas to their fullest potential.

From my experience in working within the beverage industry, using cultural values or

normalities to your advantage to increase sales is a very profitable tactic. I’ve worked with

Banks DIH which is a company, stationed in Guyana, that distributes foods and beverages

across the Caribbean and West Indies. Guyana has different culture normalities than we do in

the United States. Loitering is not a crime in Guyana, people tend to sit outside of their local

convenient stores or even supermarkets relaxing and having conversation. On top of that, it is

not illegal to drink or have open alcoholic beverages outside of these locations. Within

Guyana’s culture it is a normality to see people casually drinking beverages outside of local

stores. Banks DIH marketers had come up with their own personal tactic to capitalize on this

cultural aspect, they say “cold is sold”. They push to have more shelf refrigerator space in

comparison to their competitors, by building strong relations with their vendors, in order for

their product to be picked up first by the individuals who want to relax and open the beverage

up instantly. From having more accessible six pack beverages in the refrigerator in the back, to

having individual cold beverages all throughout the refrigerators in the front by the register.

Taking up all the refrigerator space, almost leaves the consumer with no choice but to

purchase the product in order to participate in the cultural norm.

Culture drives our ways of thinking, our perception of life, to the way we behave. Banks

DIH, shows us how being vigilante and observant about how your culture behaves can you

then use it to your marketing advantages. By paying attention to society can we than use the

culture to our advantage to influence the behaviors of our consumers in their purchasing

process.