Intercultural Communication

Intercultural Communication: Cultural Dynamics in Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" Campaign Student's Name Institution Course Code and Name Professor's Name Submission Date Introduction and Overview The "Share a Coke" campaign of Coca-Cola is an example of intercultural communication. The company launched the campaign in many countries worldwide and aimed to personalize bottles with the names of the consumers or those of their loved ones. Through analysis of the cultural context of the campaign in conjunction with media portrayal and academic literature, this paper aims to determine how cultural values and communication styles influence consumers' reactions. It will address the connection of the cultural dimensions, including individualism-collectivism and high versus low context communication, with the marketing approaches of multinational corporations like Coca-Cola. It aims to investigate these areas to comprehend the achievement of the "Share a Coke" campaign in different cultural environments. The interesting media contents to be analyzed are newspaper articles, online news sources, and social media discussions about the opening and consumer reactions to the campaign. Also, this paper will review the academic literature on intercultural communication, individualism-collectivism style, and high and low context communication style to provide a theoretical basis for our analysis. The literature review is very important for this paper because it permits a theoretical examination of the impact of cultural norms and communication values on consumer behavior. Understanding dynamics within the "Share a Coke" campaign in different cultural contexts is possible using existing theories and empirical data. Therefore, this paper explores the connection between culture, communication, and marketing strategies through the Coca-Cola "Share a Coke" campaign. This paper aims to introduce media analysis into academic literature to discuss effective intercultural communication in the global market. Literature Review The literature review of the proposed case study seeks to closely understand the intercultural communication effects of Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign. The selected theoretical framework employs different scholarly sources in investigating individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, high/low context communication, and ethnic marketing in a globalized advertisement setting. In this literature review, one of the essential elements of individualism-collectivism is a cultural dimension addressed by Neuliep (2015) and Levitt (2022). This group of scholars researches the influence of individualistic and collectivistic cultures on consumer behavior and how the latter affects marketing tactics. In the case of individualistic cultures, attempts at personal achievements and distinctive identity stir consumers who prefer products focused on individual identity. However, collectivist cultures emphasize group harmony, affecting personalization-based marketing campaigns' effectiveness. Saha and Nanda (2022) analyze and debate power distance among organizational dynamics across cultures. This aspect is essential for understanding the power politics of consumer reactions to ads. High power distance cultures are characterized by the strong influence of hierarchical organizations and authority figures, which may affect the success of campaigns that try to create a more democratic interpersonal relationship with the customers. Another aspect of the analysis is the uncertainty avoidance topic offered by Yi (2021). This concept helps to understand how cultural differences in tolerances of ambiguity impact the consumer attitude towards the new marketing approaches. Coca-Cola's brand strategy may be inappropriate in high uncertainty avoidance cultures because they love known and regular marketing patterns. High- and low-context communication, as defined by Neuliep (2015) and Levitt (2022), is an essential variable in assessing the reception of the marketing message. High-context cultures, where communication is carried out using implicit hints and shared understanding, would find personalized branding very effective. In contrast, low-contex...