This paper will touch on the following topics: the 'new consumer', how key trends in society, new cultural landscapes, and new ethics are interconnected and how they reflect the consumer's values, needs and expectations towards products, environments, brands, brand language and 'quality' in its broadest sense; how the needs, values, trends and expectations of the 'new consumer' refer directly or indirectly, to 'nature' and to 'natural elements' ; what meanings and contents are attributed to the 'natural dimension' today; and the challenges faced by industry.
Our senses interact with each other and borrow from each other's expertise in satisfying needs, or emotional language, meanings, vocabulary. Each sense has its own dynamics and uses a 'language' and a system of signs, which to a certain extent has a universal quality but also takes on culture-specific meanings. Senses are evocative of feelings, emotions and sensations that are often impalpable and indeed very subjective. Language cannot be the only tool to explore complex realities or to decode and describe cultural subtleties in sensory perception. This paper highlights the benefits of simple, user-friendly and culture-sensitive research approaches based on Sensory Semiotics as key to accessing the complex world of sensory perceptions, and expressing the rich and nuanced imagery individuals associate with them, thereby obtaining a better understanding of consumers' emotional, cognitive and behavioural response to sensory stimuli.
This paper utilizes the authors experience in automotive interior design development within Johnson Controls to provide insight into consumer awareness, design-related issues and vision; art and expertise, the sense of workmanship and vision of designers; and the sensitivity of a consumer driven corporation with a vision.
This paper illustrates the main findings of a multi-country study carried out by Market Dynamics International between May and September 1999 on behalf of RAI International, the content provider for the international market (via cable and satellite) of RAI - Radio Televisione Italiana. The paper explores the issue of what cultural identity means in todays global world; what superficial and deeper changes cultural identities undergo (the original, the current, the local) when transplanted elsewhere (or inherited or adopted); how the original identity gets integrated into and combines with other cultural identities (within the same person, or a cultural community, and in different countries); and which identity features are the strongest and the weakest. It illustrates the benefits of using a rather unconventional, although rigorous, methodological approach to culture-specific multi-country research, from both the client's and the researcher's points of view.
Visual language has become an invaluable integrated-multicultural communication medium between consumer and product, consumer and researcher, researcher and research user and research user and consumer. It is also a powerful aid for product design and testing. The 'verbal only' type of communication presents problems and limitations. The progressive internationalization of research, marketing and communication has created new challenges. Numerous examples from case studies will be given during this presentation to show how effectively visual language and verbal language work together during the research process, in analysing the findings, and their reporting to the research users. Interactive research techniques that use visual methods are the best equipped to optimise the whole research process, avoid cultural traps and communication gaps and facilitate dialogue and understanding at all stages. Moreover, visual language is by its nature user friendly, straightforward, easy to understand and extremely expressive. The use of visual language in research can be an option, a plus. In certain cases, however, it becomes indispensable. It certainly is the most universal language. It is possible to use visual language to bridge cultural differences, reveal unexpected new perspectives, highlight subtleties and nuances and translate symbolic meanings into marketing actions.
Successful and effective multinational qualitative research strongly depends on coordinating methods and styles. Coordinating agencies today, must adopt a sensitive but strong, flexible but sturdy approach and work in cooperation with the local researchers. The approach must be chosen to best affect the quality of the fieldwork, the analysis and interpretation of the results and, more importantly, the usefulness of the study and of the resulting strategies. We are working in a field where fine tuning of the research objectives and methodologies has become increasingly important, therefore, an interactive coordinating method seems to be the one that best provides effective results for the Clients' needs in international marketing.