So Sharon people sometimes tend to choose brand to stand out. Is there any cultural reason why people do that? >> Absolutely. I mean, some people want to stand out. Other people actually really want to fit in. And it turns out culture has a lot to say about this. And there's been a lot of research on this topic. So let me tell you about one study that was done at SAn Francisco International Airport where a group of researchers from stanford went up to people who were waiting to board and they asked them to fill out a survey and they said, you know, go ahead and choose a pen. You can fill out the survey. The survey turns out they did not care about what people wrote on the survey. What they cared about is which pen they chose, right? Did they choose the unique pen, the one that stands out? Or did they choose the pen that allowed them to fit in, the one that was more similar to the others. And it turns out culture made a huge difference. So East asian participants tended to choose the pen that was more like the others. Western participants like european americans tended to choose the unique pen, right? And what this shows is something that we've known from other research as well, that this is a basic motivational difference between consumers. Some people want to have the choice that blends in that feels appropriate and those are more likely to be from East asian or South asian or more collectivist cultures and others want the thing that helps them to stand out and be unique, be different from all the rest. And those are more like us, the Westerners fascinating. >> Now we're going to talk about those things in in this module, which we're going to talk about how consumers make different decisions based on their cultural background and sometimes it's this very immune dane decisions of just choosing a pen that happens rather automatically. >> Exactly. >> Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. >> So Carlos in your professional experience, can you share an example of a case where you had to think about cultural differences in consumer's needs or behaviors? >> Well, I have many different experiences and most of them related to my time when I was working at Citibank. So I had the opportunity to work with many different cultures when I was in Venezuela, you know? Yes, I developed advertising for the Venezuelan market, but also to Brazilian and Argentinian and the Caribbean region. And then when I moved to Turkey, then I was in charge of advertising for Turkey, but also to Egypt and Israel and it was fascinating to see how things would work differently. What at the local country, people would perceive would be effective. And one of the things that for me was more striking is how much information you put in ads and how people can process that information and how there are differences in different parts of the world based on how much people can easily connect information in an ad with what could look like distracted information for others. So in in in Turkey was very common for us to develop pieces that had a lot of information that you have the focal benefits of a product and then you have the context in which the product could be used and many other different pieces of details and images and graphics and you know, the things look very crowded. And one of the things that we learn here in the States is that you want to have clean ads that have very few things in them. You have focal objects, focal benefits white space, a lot of white space and then objects that are very noticeable against a white background. And that points to this distinction in how much people can easily the highest. People can process information contextually and connecting it to the context and the background. So in the Middle East, in Turkey and in some extent also in latin America you see it people are more comfortable with crowded information because they have an advantage processing information that is connected to the context and the background. But here in the States more individualistic environments, then we're more trained to focus on a focal object and pay attention to that. So that explains why sometimes advertising here, it's more it's more clean, it's more minimalist. Whereas in this East, asian countries, you see a lot more noise in the environment, It's so interesting that idea that in the West you have to separate the object from the background. >> So the product is its own star? Yeah, interesting. >> So Sharon, have you ever seen a clash between shoppers and shopkeepers? >> My favorite story about this is told by my friend hazel Markus, who is one of the most influential researchers in cross cultural consumer behavior. So she tells the story of an american woman who's probably her shopping for prints and a public market in japan. And she's looking at all the prints and she's carefully selecting just the right ones. And once she finally does that she takes the prince that she's carefully chosen, takes them to the shopkeeper to pay. The shopkeeper looks at them approvingly and says all the american women like these ones. Now, even though the shopkeeper intended this as a compliment, she's crestfallen, right? And it kind of illustrates this difference, This cultural clash in what it is. People are trying to achieve. The woman was trying to achieve uniqueness. She wanted to stand out and express herself through her specific choice of paintings and prints. The shopkeeper was just trying to assure her that her choices were normative and appropriate to her social group, right? But the fact that they had those completely different mindsets meant that they really couldn't complement each other in the way that they hoped. Yeah, it's fascinating how important culture is, you know, for selling interactions? And we assume that, you know the same style of selling will work in different places. But really how do you then send a compliment to somebody? Might vary dramatically, depending on the culture. >> Exactly.
