NATIONAL STEREOTYPING AS A MARKETING TOOL

April 17th 2015

Our 10th class of intercultural manager was divided in two parts.
The first one was the presentation of the Germanic and Eastern Europe cultural cluster, where the class mates explained us the importance of have a deep knowledge in terms of knowing how to manage relationships between different cultures, not just because is important when doing business but also is important to understand your own culture, according to the UNESCO "Understanding others makes possible a better knowledge of oneself: any form of identity is complex, for individuals are defined in relation to other people - both individually and collectively - and the various groups to which they owe allegiance, in a constantly shifting pattern."

The class mates did a comparison of those clusters in terms of the metaphors that we saw in class (Gannon, Hofstede) and a very interesting contrast with our Colombian culture.

The second part of the class, Heiko expose how companies use the stereotypes, to do their marketing campaigns, also we saw the differences between a positive stereotype with a negative stereotype.
From my point of view stereotyping is not good even when they are positive; The stereotypes describe judgement made about others on the basis of their ethnic group membership (Lippman, 1992), this led us think that the whole community is going to be judge because of the thoughts of people but no everybody is the same.

Heiko gave an example of a German company named Bank Forum where the company used positive stereotypes of the German people in order to have market access in other country; even being positive stereotypes some people are not going to agree due to the different characteristics.

An other example is the National Express commercial, where an English academy from England is encouraging people to go and study over there, the commercial is about England people on the street talking how the external world think about them and their country, moreover with bad stereotypes, their are trying to show that England in not as bad as they say.

QUESTION!!!
It can be consider that stereotyping is part of human nature?

According to Rebecca Cook, specialist in international human rights and gender, stereotyping is part of the human nature, everyone has been stereotyped or has stereotyped, everybody does that to describe, generalize and judge people very quickly.
For example always women have been seen as a housewives and mothers, rather than men that have been seen as a supporters of the homes.
For example, if men want to stay at home and look after the children society will disapprove that behavior, which means that in society stereotypes are natural.  


Brunsch, C. (2007). Stereotyping as a Phenomenon in Intercultural Communication (p. 32). GRIN Verlag.

Delors, J. (n.d.). Learning The Treasure Within. Retrieved April 17, 2015, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001095/109590eo.pdf

Express English: National stereotypes [Motion picture]. (n.d.).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYJXNkMKgX8

Los estereotipos negativos son una enfermedad social. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2015, from http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/10/07/ls-portada.html