Taking a Brand Global: Psychology Across Cultures
What research says changes and what stays constant when a brand crosses cultures: brand personality, names and scripts, colour meanings and the pull of a global image.
Answer to the question
What does an international branding agency adapt?
An international branding agency keeps a brand's core and tests a local layer. Research finds shared brand personality dimensions across Japan, the United States and Spain with one local dimension each, colour meanings that overlap and differ across eight countries, and brand name recall that varies with script. A global image added value in two samples.
Key takeaways
- Aaker and colleagues (2001) found brand personality dimensions common to Japan and the United States, plus peacefulness in Japan and ruggedness in the United States, and a common set plus passion in Spain.
- Schmitt and colleagues (1994) predicted that recall of brand names would differ by whether a name was heard or read in Chinese and in English, and their experiment in China and the United States partially supported this for unaided recall.
- Madden and colleagues (2000) studied colour meanings across eight countries and found both similar and differing meanings, with colour combinations matched to a logo read in context.
- Steenkamp and colleagues (2003) found, in samples from the United States and Korea, that perceived brand globalness was positively related to perceived quality and prestige and, through them, to purchase likelihood, with weaker effects among more ethnocentric consumers.
- Our inference: a brief for a brand abroad can separate what stays identical from what is tested with local readers.
Asked to describe brands as if they were people, respondents in Japan, the United States and Spain used traits that mostly lined up, and each country added one of its own. Jennifer Aaker and colleagues reported the result in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. For an international branding agency or an in-house team it is a useful picture of the job: a brand that crosses a border keeps a shared core and meets a local layer.
Core and local layer
Do the traits people attach to brands form the same pattern in every country? Four studies by Aaker and colleagues, published in 2001, asked exactly that. In Japan and the United States they found a set of dimensions common to both, plus one dimension in each country that the other lacked: peacefulness in Japan and ruggedness in the United States. When they extended the work to Spain, the common dimensions appeared again alongside a dimension specific to Spain, passion. The authors read brands as carriers of a culture's values and beliefs, which is why a local dimension appears at all.
The practical reading is ours. Much of what a brand stands for can travel, and the part that needs local attention is narrower than the whole. An international branding agency that begins from the shared dimensions and tests the local one is working with the pattern the study describes, instead of rebuilding a brand from nothing in each market.
Erin Meyer's The Culture Map takes a similar line in a business setting. It is a practitioner's framework that treats differences between cultures as differences in expectation that people can learn to read, with no side counted as better than another. The same stance suits brand work, where a local trait is an addition to the picture and never a fault in it.
Do names and colours travel?
A brand name reaches a person in two ways, by ear and by eye, and languages differ in how they write what the ear hears. A 1994 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, led by Bernd Schmitt, set Chinese, which is written with ideographic characters, beside English, which is written with an alphabet. The authors argued that these structural differences shape mental representations and so affect how consumers remember verbal information, and they predicted that unaided recall of a brand name would differ depending on whether the name was heard or read in each language. Their experiment in China and the United States partially supported the predictions for unaided recall.
The same name can be held differently depending on the script it arrives in and the channel it arrived through. Meaning is only one of the things a name carries abroad. Sound and script are two more, and an international branding agency or an in-house team can test each before launch with local readers and listeners. How easily a name is said is a separate research story, told in The Brand You Can Pronounce.
Colour meanings were compared across eight countries in a cross-national study led by Thomas Madden and published in the Journal of International Marketing in 2000. Consumers' readings of colours and colour combinations showed similarities in some places and differences in others. The authors also looked at colours matched to a product logo and found that some combinations carried a consistent meaning while others were complementary, and they discuss what this means for keeping a brand's image consistent across markets.
The useful unit is the colour in context. A palette is read together with the logo, the product and the market, so the question for a team is what this colour means beside this mark in each place, and a single dictionary entry for a colour answers less than that. Where meanings overlap, a brand can keep its palette as a recognisable asset, and an international branding agency can say so with some confidence. Where they differ, a local check costs little beside a repaint.
Does a global label help?
Why do some consumers prefer global brands to local ones? A 2003 paper in the Journal of International Business Studies, led by Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, put the question to consumers in the United States and Korea. Perceived brand globalness was positively related to perceived quality and to prestige, and through them to the likelihood of purchase. The effects were weaker among consumers higher in ethnocentrism, a measure of how strongly people favour buying from their own country.
For the standardise-or-adapt choice this gives a neutral finding. In those two samples, being seen as global added value, and how much it added varied with how strongly buyers favoured the home market. A brand can therefore show a global identity and a local presence side by side, a decision for an international branding agency and its client to make together. The samples came from two countries, and why the countries a study draws on shape what it can claim is explained in What are WEIRD samples in psychology.
What an international branding agency tests first
The four studies suggest a working split between what a brand tries to keep identical and what it tests locally. The table below is our own summary of that split, and each row rests on one of the studies above.
| Element | Often kept constant | Worth testing locally |
|---|---|---|
| Name | The intended meaning and personality | Sound, script and how well it is recalled |
| Colour | The palette as a recognisable asset | What the colour means beside the logo and product |
| Personality | The shared dimensions of the brand | One locally prominent trait |
| Global or local cue | Signals of quality and prestige | How much local presence to show |
An international branding agency that works through the table row by row gives a client a brief with two columns, one for what stays and one for what is checked. A brand identity system built this way leaves room for the second column from the start.
An international branding agency can keep a short market note beside the table, recording who tested which row, in which language and with how many readers, so that the next market can start from what the last one learned. Over a few launches the second column shrinks for elements that keep matching and grows only where a market has shown a real difference, so the testing effort follows the evidence instead of repeating itself everywhere.
The same method suits an in-house team or an outside adviser. Write down which elements the brand will hold identical across markets, say why, and name the readers in each market who will test the rest. A result that comes back different is information about the market, and a brief written in two columns can take it in.
Common questions
What does an international branding agency adapt?
Research points to a core that stays and a layer that is tested. Aaker and colleagues found shared brand personality dimensions across Japan, the United States and Spain, plus one local dimension each. Schmitt and colleagues found that recall of brand names in Chinese and English varied with whether a name was heard or read, so sound and script are worth testing locally.
Should a brand standardise or adapt abroad?
The research reviewed here supports a mix. A brand can hold its shared core, such as the personality dimensions common to the countries Aaker and colleagues studied, and test a local layer with readers in each market.
Do colours mean the same everywhere?
Madden and colleagues studied eight countries and found both similar and different colour meanings, and colour combinations matched to a logo were read in context. Testing a palette with local readers is a sensible step.
Does looking global help a brand?
In samples from the United States and Korea, Steenkamp and colleagues found that perceived brand globalness was related to perceived quality and prestige and, through them, to purchase likelihood, with weaker effects among more ethnocentric consumers.
Sources
Meyer, E. (2014). The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. PublicAffairs.
Aaker, J. L., Benet-Martinez, V., & Garolera, J. (2001). 'Consumption symbols as carriers of culture: A study of Japanese and Spanish brand personality constructs.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(3), 492-508. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.81.3.492 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.3.492
Schmitt, B. H., Pan, Y., & Tavassoli, N. T. (1994). 'Language and Consumer Memory: The Impact of Linguistic Differences between Chinese and English.' Journal of Consumer Research, 21(3), 419. doi:10.1086/209408 https://doi.org/10.1086/209408
Madden, T. J., Hewett, K., & Roth, M. S. (2000). 'Managing Images in Different Cultures: A Cross-National Study of Color Meanings and Preferences.' Journal of International Marketing, 8(4), 90-107. doi:10.1509/jimk.8.4.90.19795 https://doi.org/10.1509/jimk.8.4.90.19795
Steenkamp, J.-B. E. M., Batra, R., & Alden, D. L. (2003). 'How perceived brand globalness creates brand value.' Journal of International Business Studies, 34(1), 53-65. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400002 https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400002