What explains the failure of Google in the Korean market? The Impact of Multicultural PR Strategy

Abstract

The era of globalization provides us with both opportunities and threats. The success of a multinational corporation depends largely on its ability to adapt itself to new market environment. We believe that understanding and implementing multicultural PR strategy can be a key to the multinational corporations’ success in foreign markets. We argue in this paper that even a global iconic company such as Google needs to focus on how to understand local consumers’ needs and preferences before formulating and implementing PR strategy. Having a global hit product or service is not sufficient enough to be successful in some foreign markets. It is especially more evident in the industries where companies deal with individual consumers, and perceptions and sentiments play a large role in their purchase decisions. The objective of this research is to find out the relationship between multicultural PR strategy and business performance. Therefore, our main hypothesis is; better implementation of multicultural PR strategy by a multinational corporation will result in higher performance in the foreign markets. To prove the relationship between multicultural PR strategy and performance, we designed a framework that uses Rudan’s (2004) five rules for multicultural PR strategy. It is a contribution to the business academics as there are very few studies that directly focus on and analyze the multicultural aspects of a multinational company’s PR strategy. Through our research, we found strong evidence that there is a positive relationship between the level and effectiveness of a company’s multicultural PR strategy and its performance in the foreign markets. This offers some meaningful implications to the managers of the multinational corporations and those who are considering going into a foreign market for the first time. We also suggested a way of measuring the implementation of multicultural PR strategy. By applying five rules for multicultural PR strategy to Google’s PR activities, it allowed us to convert qualitative information into quantitative data. This kind of tool can be helpful for multinational corporations that want to evaluate their own PR activities.