Cultural Diversity In South Africa

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Introduction
Culture is characterized by language, religion, food, music, arts and social norms (Zimmermann, 2012). Just from that definition, this characterizes diversity from a standpoint of cultural value, consumer behavior, and market environment. South Africa is the epitome of diversity. It is made up of a variety of other cultures that are all housed on one country. This country has 11 different ways to communicate, which is a great reason why South Africa is important in the global market. With many avenues of trade and a big sample size to trade with, this leads to unlimited resources and a booming global market. (Introduction: Describe research purpose and address the reasons why the selected country is important in global markets.)
Cultural Variables
South Africa is a unique country that has access to 11 different language uses (SA-Venues). In order from most used, they consist of Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, English, Sepedi, Tswana, Southern Sotho, Tsonga, Swazi or SiSwati, Venda and Ndebele. Zulu and Xhosa being the 2 most commonly understood. Afrikaans derived from he Dutch and was used in its region as the 1st or 2nd language. The white inhabitants who have come to start a new life use English, Sepedi is grouped with the Northeastern part of South Africa. Tswana is the language of Botswana and are apart of Southeastern African language. The Vatsonga people, who are divided among their region, speak Tsonga. Swazi or SiSwati comes from this and create their own name in the country. Venda is a language common to the royal region of Limpopo. Their speakers are very popular and their speech influences others to adopt it. Then you have Ndebele, whose language is slowly fading because the other languages in Zimbabwe are more p...

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...a and Gap (Contributor 2012). South Africa is the ideal place for brand development because they are so developed and styles are easily accepted. There is also the fact that their youth, like other countries, are heavily influenced by western cultures. This brand preference is all about an image and fitting in with social norms. As for consumer trends, South Africa’s society has a buy, but not save mentality (Clark, 2012). They would rather buy for the now, and not save for the future, which is both helping and hurting their economy. Retail and electronics are always going to be in demand and are always going to be top needs for consumers. When it comes time to pay the bills, people struggle to pay because they didn’t save. This keeping up with the Joneses trend is detrimental when it comes to things the people need, but perfect to keep up with societies standards.

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