1.4 Research background and significance of the study

The research will be conducted under the focus of the comparison between Russia and Ireland. Cross-cultural differences are a significant element with regards to the current multinational business environment. However, these differences are sometimes neglected even by large and popular international companies. Corporations must be aware that customers differ across countries and so do their perceptions of promotion activities. Addressing potential customers should be therefore done considering “cultural meaning perspective” (Usunier and Lee, 2009), which implies a specific approach to a specific culture.

Considering marketing communications, a particular emphasis will be given to modern online marketing communications. This is because of the growing importance of the Internet and social media for the tourism and hospitality industry, due to high Internet penetration internationally and changing attitudes to online marketing (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2011).

The aforementioned area of study is interesting for me for several reasons. On the personal level, I have always been interested in issues arising when working in cross-cultural business environment in terms of marketing perspectives. From my previous academic background I have got to know that the marketing communication mix which works for one country, does not always work in the same way when applied to another country due to its national culture. To illustrate, people usually focus on the recent reviews on TripAdvisor, when they are choosing a hotel. However, respondents in Russia and Japan are the only two markets who read almost all reviews to get an overall idea of opinions (Hospitality Net, 2014). In other words, if for most people it is enough to get the general opinion about a hotel by reading only the latest reviews, Russian and Japanese tourists will look for all available information. Therefore, information provided by marketing communications might be perceived differently, because the more reviews a person reads the more information might be found, including negative information. Thus, the topic has been primarily chosen due to its relevance for marketing communication practice when companies extend their activities internationally with particular focus on Russia and Ireland. Additionally, I am originally from Russia and I have been living there for most of my life and it might be assumed that I have gained a certain understanding of my country’s culture. Now I study in Ireland, and will thus be able to get in closer touch with Irish culture to conduct my research in a practical way.

Regarding business perspectives, it is worth noting that cultural aspects are gaining a considerable role nowadays due to the fact that more companies are becoming international. Moreover in practice there have been negative examples of marketing communication campaigns when cultural differences were underestimated. One of the examples is about EuroDisney in France in 1990, when American cartoon characters were promoted. However, most of French people stayed away and demonstrated a nationalistic reaction. They saw the campaign negatively as American Imperialism and, moreover, they claimed that French culture had its own popular cartoon characters. Another failure was related to the beverages on the territory of EuroDisney. Wine was not being sold and in fact, it was prohibited. However, it is known that wine is a part of French culture and French people consume more wine then other nations (Amine, 2017).

From academic perspectives, in 2014 research was conducted about the influence of culture on marketing communications within South African and German businesses. The findings of this study revealed the following as critical cultural factors to marketing communication: language, value systems, religion, level of education, attitude towards time, as well as the marketing communication style and marketing messages. Indeed, the aforementioned cultural factors were identified as the difficulties that companies met when operating in foreign markets (Schnalke and Mason, 2014).

With reference to my work, it might be assumed that because of different culture Russian and Irish tourists will have a different reaction towards marketing communications of international companies as well. However, this research is focused specifically on the tourism and hospitality industry, while in the study about South Africa and Germany all types of businesses were considered.

Eventually, there is a dilemma as to to which extent the marketing communications tools and messages should be standardized when targeting markets internationally (Orth et al. 2007). As there is no more specific information found on what aspects of how the perception of Marketing Communication differs across Russia and Ireland it will be addressed in this work. The Russian Federation and Ireland were chosen as the key markets in this context. Ireland is a European Union country with close business relations to Western Europe. On the contrary Russia, with its isolation from Western European influence, represents another type of country. Taking these two points into consideration it might be assumed that there are cultural differences between countries, which might be worth discovering for international companies.