somebody asked -- "Is culture a barrier in international businsess"? It seems to be a quiet normal / simple question to answer & the obvious answer is -- "yes"
but then if we take the case of "hollywood movies" as a product & their success in India, it is like an exception to the above point. the culture of both places is different but still hollywood movies are successful in India ... so it seems that culture is not a barrier in this case. Looking at the success of hollywood movies in India , it seems that "everybody understands the language of entertainment"... or the language of entertainment is same everywhere.
I disagree, ... because - We as Indians can be divided into broadly 2 categories ... urban educated of metro cities & rest. It is visible that metros are very similar to the west, so the success of hollywood movies is very likely there. if we release 10 hollywood movies in metro, may be 8 will do well, but it is not like that in rest of india.
Now, if we leave the first category & talk about the rest of India...
1) even if we think as residents of a "B class" city or a "mini metro" ... many hollywood movies do not get released in this part ... WHY??? & moreover, most of the movies that are released here are of a particular type (ie action, thrill, fiction, full of special effects) WHY??? -- because the film distributors know that for us ... hollywood movies means - action, special effects, technology, thrill, ficton etc etc ... so for us all this is fine once in a while not everyday. JUST IMAGINE ... NO SONGS, NO GROUP DANCING, NO MARRIAGES, NO MELODRAMA ... that too in all the movies. MOST OF US JUST CANT DO WITHOUT THESE.
3) If we say that culture is not a barrier in case of hollywood movies in India, then answer my question - why dont we release them "as it is"? why do we have to sensor them? the answer is - our culture can accept technology, action but not other things (u understand that)
4) last but most important --- language is a important part of culture ... can we say that holywood movies will be as successful as they are now if we release them in ENGLISH & in other language .... i doubt.
So i think that fortunately this product - "hollywood movies" - is like McDonalds or Pizza Hut ... where you can adjust the product according to the local culture & hence they do well , but otherwise it is like McDonalds selling beef in India ... didnt accepted isnt it? So culture is playing a vital role even in case of success of hollywood movies in India.
What's ur opinion .. is culture a barrier or not????
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2 comments:
first i would like to replace word "hollywood"with "foreign"
Being a marketing person i think culture is a barrier which is meant to be broken may be now or few years later and all you need is good targeting and positioning of your customers. you can sell anything in india and entertainment is not an exception. the only cultural barrier which remain in future will be RELIGION.
as we know that vcd/dvd players have already penetrated the rural market and availability of pirated movies has increased the exposure rate for foreign movies.rightnow rest of india public is going for these movies for "other" purposes but still acceptability is there.
so dear friend, wait for the day when this topic will not be in debate AMEN!!!!
Culture has been a barrier in marketing and it shall always be...
Unless of course our culture gets transformed into the western one which I don’t see happening in the near future. We all agree that there is an unambiguous culture difference in the west and us. That comes from our brining up and everything around us.
If the argument arises that why do almost all the English movies released in India receive a good response, lemme tell you that only 50% of the Hollywood movies released in US come down to India. Most of them are big bannered ones, so the movies already get filtered before being released. Only the movies with a good chance of being hit are released, which get further filtered as we move down from metro’s to other smaller cities.
So it is like in India only the movies from the banners like yash raj and k sera sera get released. Very obviously the success rate would be tremendous one..
Culture is a barrier that doesn’t mean we should stop going global or use the culture of the country we are entering totally. There are ways to bypass this barrier n that’s wot successful organizations are doing like McDonalds. One recent example would be subway the international chain, they came to India with their international bestsellers menu but they have been forced to adopt a indianised menu with paneer tikkas n stuff
so i guess my point is clear…….
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