Cultural Diversity and its Influence on the Attitudes of Africans and Indians toward Marketing Communication: A South African Perspective

Culture has been reported to be one of the major factors influencing attitudes toward marketing communication. However, identification across prevailing cultural dimensions could have unique implications for attitudes toward marketing communication. This paper examines how African and Indian cultural values may or may not influence attitudes toward marketing communication. It explores how Africans converge with or diverge from Indians with regards to culturally sensitive attitudes toward marketing communication, based on a Marketing Communication-Specific Cultural Values (MCSCV) model adapted from the individualism-collectivism constructs. Attitudes toward marketing were measured based on the advertising scale of the Index of Consumer Sentiment toward Marketing (ICSM) practices. Data generated for this study were based on responses provided by 283 and 92 African and Indian shoppers at the main shopping malls in the most predominant African and Indian townships in Durban, South Africa viz. Umlazi and Chatsworth, respectively. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Categorical Principal Component Analysis (CATPCA) were conducted on the dataset. Findings revealed that both races displayed more individualistic than collectivistic tendencies toward marketing communication, but Africans exhibited more collectivistic tendencies than their Indian counterparts. In addition, respondents’ individualistic tendencies have a significant influence on attitudes toward marketing communication which showed that consumers’ indigenous cultural disposition play a moderating role on attitudes toward marketing communication. This study builds on the marketing literature by validating the implications of cultural diversity for marketing communication. The study emphasizes how the interplay between target markets’ underlying cultural dispositions and cultural values held toward marketing communication, influence the consistency or inconsistency in consumers’ attitudes toward marketing communication.