Should we take into account national culture as we develop our marketing product policy?

Abstract

This article studies the association between national culture and innovation and whether this link should be taken into account when strategic marketing decision is made. We verified the hypothesis that a cultural map will be replicated in terms of an innovation index. We chose a recent cultural map of nations based on stable attitudes toward moral norms associated with the creation and destruction of life (divorce, homosexuality, prostitution, euthanasia, abortion, and suicide) as measured by the nationally representative World Values Survey, and national numbers of registered patents with the U.S. Patent аnd Trademark Office in the past three decades. We found a high degree of similarity between the cultural pattern and the chosen innovation index. Our results support previous studies that discuss associations between culture and innovation and have implications for international managers.