Habits develop differently in different cultures. Mobile phone usage is no exception. In some villages in Africa you will find no house number, but rather their phone number as a way to reach them. If you think about it, it makes sense and it works for them. It is vital for marketers to be aware of the cultures of their targets and to be sensitive to them. Marketers should always be aware of their target demographic and build customer bios to represent their audience. Marketing to different cultures is no different, marketers need to put in the research to identity and build what their target customer looks like and go from there.

Not all cultures use the same mobile features. For example, a underdeveloped company may not have the proper infrastructure for internet so mobile web may be a better answer for them. In the same way, SMS marketing may better suit some cultures if their mobile web isn’t a popular service. The variety of channels in mobile advertising provides advertisers with more to work with to get their message out there. Voice messaging, SMS and MMS, mobile web and streaming downloads are among the services that marketers can choose from. All these options allow marketers to create a unique and targeted message for their users.

YellowPepper is a service that allows users to make financial transactions on the mobile platform in Latin America. Services like this allow people who live far away from banks to make financial transactions from anywhere. Since 78% of Latin American residents have mobile devices, this type of service is a great development idea for banks in those countries. The moral of the story is that any marketing endeavor requires research on that target audience and their culture.

References:

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/yellowpepper-targets-unbanked-for-mobile-services-in-latin-america/

http://ezinearticles.com/?Different-Consumer-Habits-in-Different-Cultures—Multicultural-Marketing&id=981810

http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=3007