A Comparative Case Study of Global Marketing and Ethnocentrism ...

INTRODUCTION
This thesis studies ethnocentrism in global marketing, focusing on the Internet
as a global marketing medium. It asks whether or not the Internet as a marketing tool
aggravates or helps to break down the barriers of Western culture ethnocentrism in
cross-cultural marketing messages. It tests the hypothesis that U.S. based companies
promote Western culture ethnocentrism across country and cultural boundaries when
marketing through the Internet. Additionally, it seeks to establish a prototype model
for developing culturally sensitive Internet marketing.
Ethnocentrism is a universal phenomenon that affects all kinds of interactions
between different groups of people (Sinkovics and Holzmuller 4). The term
“ethnocentrism” was coined in 1906 by William Graham Summer who defined
ethnocentrism as having a view of things in which one’s own group is the center of
everything and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it (Summer 13). It is
generally thought of as the feeling that one’s own culture is better than all others. Past
research in the area of global marketing and ethnocentrism shows that ethnocentrism
can determine how companies act in and toward certain cultures when conducting
business. Examples of many traditional cross-cultural marketing practices reveal that
ethnocentric thinking is detrimental to international advertising and product design.
This has been especially true for U.S. based companies marketing to non-western
cultures.
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