Transformations  in
Business & Economics

The Resistance of National Cultures to Global Marketing Influence
Indrė Pikturnienė

ABSTRACT. Due to increased regional integration, countries, which were previously closed to the world, became exposed to universal or partly adapted marketing mixes. A discussion whether global marketing campaigns can influence national cultures, and serve as a drive for emergence of global culture is developed in the article. The paper demonstrates that the conclusion, whether global marketing campaigns can generate globalisation of culture, depends on the definition of culture, which can overwhelm either manifest, or core layer of culture, or both of them. Cases of standardised versus adapted global campaigns and culture free versus culture bound products, resistance of national cultures to the impact of global culture, penetration of modern culture into all world cultures, and the notion of post-modern consumer as a dictator of the nature of consumer-marketer relationship are used to demonstrate the author’s view on the issue. The desk research, performed in February 2003, demonstrates that Lithuania is inevitably exposed to the influence of global business.

KEYWORDS: global marketing, global culture, national culture, globalisation, acculturation.

JEL classification: M31, F02, Z10.