International Marketing in Germany – From a cultural perspective

Summary 
The culture of a country influences the way foreign companies design their marketing mix 
applying standardization or adaptation. The more knowledge of the target country’s culture 
that the company possesses, the easier it is for it to design a more successful marketing mix.
The main purpose of this thesis is to find out what adaptations and standardizations of the 
marketing mix have been made due to German culture when internationalizing to Germany. 
This will be done by analyzing how the German culture affects manufacturing Swedish 
companies’ marketing mix and their choice of adaptation or standardization. The second 
purpose of our thesis is to point at the importance of cultural knowledge of the target market. 
In chapter two the reader is introduced to the theoretical base within marketing theory and 
cultural theory that supports the problem and purpose of the thesis. This includes the 
traditional marketing mix that is a widely used concept and consists of the four P’s: price, 
product, promotion and place. An extended marketing mix with additional P’s is also 
reviewed. The theoretical base also includes four widely known and accepted culture models, 
namely Terpstra’s cultural model, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, Trompenaars’ value 
dimensions and Hall’s cultural model regarding high and low context. Based on gained 
knowledge and according to the purpose of the thesis, we define culture as everything in a 
country that forms an individual’s behavior. It is a wide conception including language, 
history, religion, education, technology, social organization, politics, law, values and 
attitudes. The culture definition is thereupon applied on Germany and its culture in chapter 
four. 
In order to answer to the problem of the thesis, we have chosen a combination of exploratory 
research, descriptive research and case study which we review in chapter three. This means 
that we gain a large part of the necessary information through the case study. The descriptive 
phase was useful when identifying cultural variables causing changes in the marketing mix. 
The data is gathered through a qualitative method and we make use of primary as well as 
secondary data sources. 
In chapter five the reader can enjoy the submitted interviews with the six respondent 
companies: Wasa Bröd AB, Göteborgs Kex AB, The Absolut Company AB, Nudie Jeans 
Marketing AB, Filippa K AB and Precimeter Group. 
The analysis and conclusion in chapter six and seven show that the pricing mix, place mix and 
promotion mix seem to be hard to standardize when internationalizing to Germany. The 
reason for adaptation has mostly been German culture, but not always. Moreover, the product 
mix seems to be possible to standardize, but the reasons seem rather to be a wish of having a 
univocal brand, scale economies and that it is easier than German culture. The results imply 
that knowledge of German culture is of importance for Swedish companies when 
internationalizing 
to 
Germany. 

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