Tunnel Vision West and Wide Angle East – Elina Halonen challenges us to look more closely at how cultural differences affect self perceptions – and those of the wider world – while attempting an analysis framework.

: Elina Halonen challenges us to look more closely at how cultural differences affect self perceptions – and those of the wider world – while attempting an analysis framework.

: Halonen Elina

Publisher: Association for Qualitative Research

: London

: 2013

: InDepth

: http://www.aqr.org.uk/indepth/spring2013/paper1.shtml

Elina Halonen challenges us to look more closely at how cultural differences affect self

perceptions – and those of the wider world – while attempting an analysis framework.

Across many areas of marketing activity, successful western

brands to try to emulate that success in developing markets. As

researchers, our understanding of the motivations and benefits

for consumer choice has grown out of Western markets and the

application of underlying psychological and sociological theories

developed in Western, and especially Anglo-American, contexts.

Most1 of what we know about consumer behaviour is based on

theories that originate in Western countries and while these

theories are assumed to be applicable to people across the world,

in reality the psychological set up they are based on is strongly

influenced by culture2.

We all know that local context and culture are powerful

influences over consumers’ desires and behaviours. By ‘culture’

we refer to the sets of values and beliefs shared by individuals of

a particular social system to interpret their environment and the

behaviour of those around them. We talk about individuals

having a ‘cultural orientation’: a tendency to interpret their

surroundings in a way that is consistent with a prevailing

particular dimension of culture.

As researchers, part of our job is to look at the world through

other people’s eyes. We need to extend our own perspective to

consider how frameworks from cross-cultural psychology can

help us dig deeper into these consumer motivations and provide

better insights for clients. Without a cross-cultural interpretative

framework, we may struggle to see patterns in our data and discard potentially powerful insights as anecdotal. Cataloguing

every single culture and its idiosyncrasies would be near

impossible, but there are conceptual frameworks which we can

use to grasp the major cultural dimensions and understand

cultures different from our own.

At the core of many of these frameworks is bi-polar distinction

between Western and Eastern cultures characterising differences

in perspective as those of ‘tunnel vision’ and ‘wide angle lens’.

Simply, in the West we are more used to viewing our lives through

a limited focus whereas in the East people are more used to

looking at the bigger picture. From this basic principle, a number

of variables or corollaries have been identified which support

this core duality at the level of individual psychology, but studies

which focus more on distinctive societal values also exist.

In this article we will;

• First, at the level of the individual, discuss academic studies

which highlight fundamental differences across cultures in the

way people see themselves, how that affects their perceptions of

the world around them and what implications that may have

on consumer behaviour.

• Second, we will explore a more detailed framework for

analysing cultures through shared values and motivations.