Independent Study on Culture's Influence on luxury consumption in Term Paper

Independent Study on Culture's Influence on luxury consumption in China and USA - Term Paper Example In order to accomplish that endeavor, the paper will examine the consumer’s characteristics in these two markets and make marketing recommendations. The paper will also give an example of some corporations and brands that have capitalized on these unique characteristics through their marketing strategies to capture the luxury market. The recent researches conducted on consumer behavior have shown a direct correlation between the people’s culture and consumer behavioral patterns (Henry 122). Each culture has its own values that it upholds. These values are the ones that affect the consumer’s attitudes towards certain products, which ultimately affect the consuming patterns and behaviors. The cultural identity affects the choice of products by affecting the perceptions and judgments of the consumer. Once these perceptions and judgments have been made consistent such that they are predictable, the consumer can said to have formed a consuming behavior. Multinational companies use these customers’ behaviors and preferences to design their marketing strategies so that they can optimize their sales and maximize their profitability (Hostede 32). As Russell and Valenzuela (87) aptly captures it, â€Å"Cross cultural value systems will influence consumer tipping behavior, product evaluations, value-a ttitude relations, persuasion effects, consumer innovativeness and behavioral intention models†. Figure 1 shows how culture influence consumer behaviors. However, culture has also been found to affect only the consumption of certain goods. There are, thus, some exempted cases whereby the culture of a certain place barely has a bearing on the consumer behaviors of a certain product. A good example is a global product, which blurs any existing cultural differences. A consumer of such a product is known as a global consumer who is not dependent on a culture to make consumption decisions in