The Impact of Culture on Consumer Behavior - Comparison Between the United Arab Emirates & the Republic of China

The impact of culture on consumer behavior

Comparison between the United Arab Emirates & The Republic of China

General about Culture:

Many questions come to the mind of a human when he thinks about what made him who he is, what shaped him as an individual or a part of the community, what makes his perception, attitude, or behavior quietly similar to people from his country/region, and different from people that are from other countries. A Human's Culture is the main answer for all the above questions. There are many definitions for culture, but the most common one is what Hofstede defined it; he said: “Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another” (Hofstede, 1984). Culture influences everything individual does; it is the key of a person's pattern of behavior, attitude, norms, ideas and values. Also, it is not inherited genetically, and it is always shared by group of people, and cannot be existed by its own. (Hall, 1976). Amongst history, people passed their culture from one generation to another, sometimes they added something to it, and sometimes they eliminated something; however, it has the same core generally, but the peel differs from one time to another.

General Culture Differences:

There might be something common between cultures, but in general cultures are indifferent. For instant, there are many differences that a person can easily observe between the UAE culture and the Chinese culture. Religion, language, social values, food, art, clothing, attitude towards work, family structure, etc, are sample issues that can be considered while comparing between the two cultures, or any two cultures.

UAE culture can be considered as a multi cultural country, since big numbers of people from different countries have immigrated to the UAE carrying their own culture, and practicing the same within their small colony/community on the UAE land. In spite of that, the UAE national culture appears clearly in almost everything in the country, and it is definitely more visible and active than the other foreign cultures there.  On the other hand, China is the third largest country in the world in the mass land, and the largest in the number of population. People in china share a certain cultural values, regardless of the huge number of its population who are living in three main regions of China, The Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. (YING FAN, 2000)

• Religion:

UAE is an Islamic country; its culture basically was shaped and inspired by the heritage of Islam where the Emarati people follow the instructions of the Holy Qur'an and the Sunna of profit Mohamed –Peace Be Upon Him–. All Emirati people are expected to pray five times a day which makes people wake up before the sun rise to pray Al Fajr in the mosque. Also, they all fast during the holy month of Ramadan no matter how much rich or poor they are; they are equaled in front of Allah. In contrast, China is officially an atheist state where most of the Chinese may be not religious. Chinese follow the Confucianism Ideology, which is probably the source of inspiration for the Chinese culture; it is practiced as a philosophy rather than a religion, so they visits a temple or a churchcan thinking that it will make them much attractive in the society. However, there are some of Chinese who are Buddhism and Western Catholicism, in addition to a small portion of Chinese who are Muslims (Associates, 2006).