Mobile phone has become an important part of human life .With the invention of new technology, along with computers, this technology has ease the work of human being in communicating with each other’s. Before the invention of mobile phones, there were land line telephones which also help human being to communicate with each other’s but at a limited scale. To use land line, person should be at one place where that phone is installed. But mobile phones remove this barrier by allowing customers to communicate with each other’s from any place where it has signals. AS this system is connected with the satellite, person can communicate without any hurdle. This is the only technology on the globe which is sold at highest numbers than any other technology. Out of 6.8 billion people on the earth, 5 billion use mobile phones (international telecommunication union, 2010).Two countries Pakistan and UK have been chosen for this dissertation because these two countries are very much different in many prospective. Pakistan telecommunication authority (PTA, 2010) shows that mobile phone in Pakistan enjoy a tremendous annual growth of 119% during 2000 to 2007. It is also being observed that between fiscal year 2006-07, mobile phone penetration increased by 15.5%. Whereas between years 2007-08, it was 55.6% which is 34.9% higher than India’s for the same period. Pakistan’s telecommunications industry maintains its growth trend in the coming years as well with the penetration rate in 2009 was 61.8% and in September this penetration rate reaches to 70%.On the other hand UK mobile phone market is different than Pakistani market. According to report presented by Ofcom (2007), the mobile phone market in UK grew by 41.3% between 2003 to 2007.In 2010, the penetration rate in UK was 84% which stay same till 2011.Mobile phone market is very competitive these days as there are number of companies who are trying to compete in this market to become the best in the business. It is very essential for the companies to better understand the buying behaviour of the customers.It gives them an edge on the competitors in targeting the right segment and getting market share. The purchasing decisions of consumers are mostly affected by factors that have direct or indirect impact on how we live and what we consume. Culture is one of the factors that impact on buying behaviour of consumers. Culture represents the behaviour, beliefs and, in many cases, the way we act learned by interacting or observing other members of society. In this way much of what we do is shared behaviour, passed along from one member of society to another. Culture play an important role in breaking target market into different segments and then targets the right segment. Blackwell et al., (2001) demonstrated that culture has a profound influence on ‘how’ and ‘why’ consumers purchase a range of products and services. The selection of products by consumer affect by the culture and it can help companies to design their marketing plan. Culture shapes the lifestyle of the consumer which affect directly on the buying pattern of the consumer.
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The cultural comparison between Pakistan and UK about mobile phone purchasing behaviour will provide a complete picture which will help understand these two countries mobile phone market. Culture defines the lifestyle of the people so it is very important for the manager to understand this factor and design a marketing plan by considering culture as a back bone of marketing. Companies these days are operating globally, marketing manager should divide the targeting segment into small sub segments on the basis of culture to market their product efficiently. Pakistani culture represent the most part of Asia’s culture and British culture represent the most of European culture. This purpose of this study to find the cultural impact on consumer buying behaviour of these two countries so that marketers of telecommunication industry use it to generalise it for the whole Asia and Europe.
Literature Review
Culture is defined in many different ways that can be used here for the sake of this paper. Culture is defined as ways of life like language, arts & science, thoughts, spirituality, social activity and interaction (Roshan).By Hofstede (1991, 2001), culture is an identity that is used to distinguish one group from another.Keegan and schlegemilch (2001) state that culture is formed by people those are living in a community for many years and has a life that pass on from one generation to another. This mean that culture has a starting point and finish point. So it’s all about the life style of a group of people whom code of life is represented by culture.Doney etal(1998) defined culture as a system of values and norms that are shared among a group of people and that when taken together constitute a design for living. So by Doney culture is the design of life. There are many different cultures exist and these cultures represents particular group of people who actually adapted that design. It also depend on the individuals whose life style effect on the culture.Doney & Lowe (2008, 73) believe that culture is made up of three essentials components. Those are (1) Beliefs: refers to the mental and verbal processes that reflect people’s knowledge and assessments of things. (2) Values: used by people as guide for what is appropriate behaviour. (3) Customs: Overt modes of behaviour that constitute culturally approved or acceptable way of behaving in specific situations.
To be very precise as far as this project is concerned, above definitions of culture are generalised. Actually theme of culture that is more suitable to this dissertation is that culture defined way of living, behaving, acting in a particular situation, dealing with others and organising oneself. That is way it is very important for the marketers who are dealing international business particularly should understand the importance of this phenomena. If they understand this concept and then target particularly segment on the basis of culture then it will be easy for them to launch the product in the right segment. So culture is the medium for communication for marketers that transmit these beliefs, values, behaviour and norms into shaping the attitude and behaviour of human. It help the members of such group in deciding what, why, where, how and when to do different things and how to act in a particular situation. So it means that culture is not a static concept. Its dynamic and it can change with the passage of time and influence one’s own behaviour although they also contribute to the culture.
Customer buying behaviour is another factor that affects consumer choices and trends. Recognizing consumer behaviour’s importance to business, marketers attempt to develop means on assessing or measuring how a customer behaves (Bailey and Schultz, 2000). Consumer buying behaviour is said to be different from one business to another in a way that consumer buying behaviour tends to have different attitudes about the needs and purpose of buying while the business-to-business approach is one which is more on supplier-company relationship. So consumer buying behaviour is the procedure which shows what, how, when and where people buy the product as they do. Thus this is an attempt to understand the decision making process in buying the products. The first thing is trying to understand the buying behaviour of the individual from the same group. Then generalise it to the whole group because all the individuals in the group have same characteristics. But decision making process is not easy. There are different levels of decision making forms. Some are low-involvement decision making process , some are high involvement decision making process. So it all depends on the product itself as well. Mobile phones are not high involvement decisions making products. But these decisions are also depend on consumer perception, attitudes and understanding of the given product based on the educational background, societal background, financial situation and more importantly social and cultural environment. Culture here play an important role on the consumer buying pattern as individuals can not live alone. They are part on culture and the way they behave all depend on the cultural environment in which they live. So it is very important that to understand the cultural to study the buying behaviour of consumer and this dissertation is all about this.
Pakistan and UK are two different cultures. Both these cultures have strong influence on the buying behaviour of its consumers. Hofstede (1991, 2001) divide culture into two different types. One is called individualistic and other one is collectivist. According to this dissertation UK is highly individualistic country in which people mostly decide individually about the buying of products. On the other hand, Pakistan scores highly as a collectivist’s country where family, friends or group influence the buying behaviour. Individualist and collectivist are two out of five cultural dimensions which Hofstede find out when he was trying to find an explanation for the motivation of IBM employees around the world.
Hall (1960, 1981, 1990) presented culture as high and low context cultures. He explains that culture can be divided into two groups. One is called high context culture and other one is called low context culture. The theme of difference between these two cultures according to Hall is the individual relationship. He stated that high context culture is based on the close tie between individual’s personals relationships such as family, friends and colleagues etc. and in this group information and knowledge is share exclusively. People in this group are social and they care each other, listen to each other’s, sometime depend each other’s and discuss information between each other’s. Hall (1960. 1981, 1990) stated that high context culture is more common in East. And as far as this project is concerned, it represents Pakistan. On the other hand, low context culture is belonging to outer group. In this culture, people live their individual life. They belong to their personal network. Family, friends and colleagues are all separate to each other’s. All of them live their individual life. Things are share less exclusively. People are more independent and make their own decisions.UK is the one in this dissertation which represents low context culture. Here society in not social enough to influence the decisions of others. People live their own life and they rarely involve in the decisions making process of others.
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Industry Background
Telecommunication industry is the fastest growing industry in the world. This is because of the fast growth in technology sector and increasingly becoming part of human lifestyle. With 73% of the world population is using mobile phones , the network covers the 90% of the world area (mob thinking, Oct2010).Mobile phone industry started way back in 1970’s when first mobile phone launched in Japan.After that this industry never look back and continuously grow with different transition period. During the last 40 years it have undergone a transition from technology focused for professional business to a mass consumer market and become an integral part of lifestyle. With the passage of time, it is not only used as a communication tool but also it is helping consumers in other businesses like of internet , financial transaction , tracking device , video conferencing and many more.
Pakistan and UK mobile phone market is very strong in the sense that Pakistani market is still growing and it need to know more about consumer buying behaviour.UK mobile phone market is also growing but more effort is needed to do business with the existing customers. Culture of an important role in consumer buying behaviour in both these market which is why this research is being done to let marketers understand the depth in the market. The comparison between these two segments will help marketers understand that how to target the existing segment and how to create new segments within the existing segment.
Research Aim
Literature Review
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