Excerpt
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 The culture of the United States
2.1 Power Distance
2.2 Individualism versus Collectivism
2.3 Masculinity versus Femininity
2.4 Uncertainty Avoidance
2.5 Long-Term Orientation
3 Mobile Moments
4 Link between “Mobile Moments” and the US consumers
4.1 Lifestyle of Multitasking
4.2 Experience as a core value
4.3 Sharing moments with friends
4.4 Result
5 How to apply “Mobile Moments” in the US consumers mind
5.1 US Mobile Market
5.2 Set of Actions
6 Conclusion
II References
III Annex
1 Introduction
In the world of business new trends are important to develop a company in order to stay competitive and successful. A relevant issue is to get to know new trends, develop a product or service, which fits to the trend. The question is: How to put a trend into consumers mind? One possibility to identi- fy trends is the website trendwaching.com. This company recognizes many different trends for an upcoming year. One of these trends they found for 2013 is mobile moments. Therewith this trend can be applied to a consumer group it is essential to know how they demand and behave. Many dif- ferent aspects influence the consumer behavior. On the one hand there are internal influences like the memories you have, your motives, what you learn and your personality. On the other hand there are external influence as reference groups you belief in, your social status, people you ask for their opinion and your culture. This together built the self-concept of a person (cf. Appendix). Since the culture influences many of the internal and external aspects it is one of the most important to con- sider when launching a product.
This work will study the chosen culture of the US, the chosen trend and how companies could influence the adaption of the trend. Furthermore, it will be explained how the trend is supported by the US culture and how the culture has to be taken into consider.
2 The culture of the United States
The United States are a very divers and multicultural country, so that you can ask the question if there is a common culture. The US consists of people who nearly all immigrated to the US and brought part of their culture with them. But they had in common the idea of freedom. Through that the cultures melted together and formed what the American culture is today (Bellah 1998). In order to describe any culture the cultural dimensions of Hofstede are good tool. Geert Hofstede discovered five different dimensions, which can be found in any culture.
2.1 Power Distance
The dimension of power distance refers to the acceptance of power inequality between different members of the same society (Pheng and Yuquan 2002). The US has a low power distance with a score of 40. Having a look at the history of the United States make clear why the score is low. In the US they believe that everyone has the same chance to achieve his goal. Furthermore, everyone is equal has the same rights and freedom. People like to be involved into any decision, which may affect them and want to be informed about upcoming changes. Additionally, the communication with each other is rather informal then formal and direct (Bergiel et al. 2012).
2.2 Individualism versus Collectivism
The continuum from individualism to collectivism describes if the people of a culture think and act as an individual and just care for themselves and their close family or as a group and care for the community (Soares et al. 2007). On the scale the US reach a score of 91, which is very high. This shows that the people think very individualistic and rely on personal success. As a result, the people just care for themselves and are geographical very mobile if they are ask to. It also refers to the historical background of the US where entrepreneurship and “self-made-man” built the country we know today. Never the less, the also work in groups to reach a goal but they try to stand out of the mass to climb up the corporate ladder (Bergiel et al. 2012).
2.3 Masculinity versus Femininity
In terms of the gender of a culture it means if the culture aspire to more masculine values, like achievements and success, or to more feminine values, like quality of life and relationships (Soares et al. 2006). As the US reaches 62 points, this means that they are a mainly masculine culture. That means that success and achievements are the primary goals in life. This fits to the part that they are very individualistic: the want to climb up and fulfill the saying “from rags to riches”. In the US it is even more important to show others what you reached and collect status symbols. It is not enough to reach what you are aiming for but to show other how good you really are (Bergiel et al. 2012).
2.4 Uncertainty Avoidance
The dimension of uncertainty avoidance describes how comfortable members of a cultural group feel with uncertainty and if they try to avoid it through e.g. rules (Pheng and Yuquan 2002). The United States traditionally is a country, which is more risk-seeking, which is reflected in the score of 46. To achieve the high goals you need to accept a risk otherwise you would not get it. Further- more, this means that the acceptance of new and innovative ideas is high and that they like to try new things, especially according to Internet and innovative products (Hofstede 2013).
2.5 Long-Term Orientation
The long-term orientation revers to the temporal horizon of a culture: If they are short-term orientated they relay on tradition and the past. Long-term orientated cultures took forward to the future and are goal orientated (Soares et al. 2006). According to Hofstedes findings the US is a mainly short-term orientated culture with a score of 29. That mean it is important to them to be a working part of social society. The decisions are made on a short-term basis for about 2 years. Furthermore, the goal is to seek for quick results, which means that normally time valuable. That means that everything has to work efficient for not wasting time (Hofstede 2013).
3 Mobile Moments
The behavior of consumer changes constantly. Because of the Internet and the connection all over the world this process develop even faster. With invention of the smartphone and its spreading a new trend emerged whereat the source for new trends was born. On of this new trend is “Mobile Moments”.
Today the majority of people own and use a smartphone or a tablet (Mark 2013). Because of this the whole consumer behavior changed deeply. It is no secret that your life is getting quicker and quicker. As a result we try to fill every minute with something, which offers us a benefit value.
The trend of “Mobile Moments” apples to the lifestyle of multitasking. The consumer has the requirement to use any moment as efficient as he can. Moreover, every use of the smartphone should become an experience. In total the consumer wants that daily routine is getting easier (Trendwatching.com 2013). No moment is too short to check your phone; most users even have the need to check it every hour (Staff; AFP 2013). That is why mobile applications, mobile Internet and mobile offers will gain even a higher importance in our life than it has today.
With this knowledge it becomes clear what will be relevant to the next years. The focus lies on using every second of the consumer to make him buy, use or experience your product. Nevertheless, the main point is that the product or service is interesting and not that time consuming. The reason is that users spend a lot of time on their smartphone but the use a single application only for a few minutes (Böhmer et al. 2011). Beside the application, the mobile communication occupies a large part of the mobile usage. The consumes want to share every moment with their friends, or even strangers, stay in contact and let them know what is going on in their life. Because of that they send more than one hundred messages a day (Rosman 2010).
In conclusion, this trend is very important for nearly every company to attract their consumer and involve the company in the daily life of them.
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