European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2839 (Online) Vol.6, No.26, 2014 84 Interrelationship between Culture and Marketing Strategy: Multiple Case Studies from the Netherlands Remy Nyukorong Swiss Management Center (SMC University), Switzerland. Postal Address: Burgemeester Cortenstraat 26, GV 6226, Maastricht, The Netherlands * Email: nyukorong.remy@student.ch or nyukorongr@ymail.com Abstract The purpose of this qualitative study was to find out whether or not culture plays a critical role in the choice of a marketing strategy. Overall, the key findings reveal that culture has greater influence in the formulation of a sustainable worldwide marketing strategy. Culture is a critical factor in the global business milieu. Thus, there is the need for marketing managers to have a good understanding of the cultural issues within the environments that they operate. This will enable them to realize the objectives of their companies through the marketing strategies that they design and implement. However, it was not very clear whether such a marketing strategy needs to be localized or standardized. In general, the findings indicate that a competitive marketing strategy must align with the local culture so that it can meet the needs and requirements of the target customers. Keywords: adaptation, competitive, culture, standardization, The Netherlands, marketing strategy 1. Introduction Designing marketing strategies for worldwide business organizations begin with a dichotomy of which is more effective, the localization approach or the standardization approach. Keegan & Green (2005 p. 29 ) has distinguished the core of global marketing program as finding the ‘balance between a standardization (extension) approach to the marketing mix elements and a localization (adaptation) approach that is responsive to country or regional differences’. Moreover, an effective worldwide marketing strategy depends on the skill of the company's management team to agree on the many value chain components of the marketing task and come to a decision on which factors can be made possible on a worldwide basis and which can be adapted to home preferences. It has been largely recognized that in adopting a standardized or a localized marketing strategy in global markets has been influenced by several issues including culture, economics, environment, and politics. Considering the current unpredictable but widespread intensification in global commerce that has taken place over the last two decades, as far back as the early 1990’s (Curry 1999) and with the consequent globalization of business, companies which have had to accept and cope with the challenges of the rate of learning in every sphere of their trade undertaking. This explorative study makes an effort to understand the application, role, and character of culture concepts in international marketing. Culture and cultural characteristics form the core of global marketing. Consequently, it is important that marketers get a good understanding of what culture entails so that they will be able to design winning, cost effective and relevant marketing strategies. If companies which are operating worldwide could devote their scarce resources on time and energy on cultural education and appreciation, then they can equally be swayed to critically evaluate the impact which culture assert on marketing as well as on the targeted market. 2. Research Problem In 1983, Theodore Levitt published a paper entitled, ‘The globalization of markets’. In this paper, Levitt strongly asserted that ‘companies must learn to operate as if the world were one large market, ignoring superficial regional and national differences’ (Levitt 1983 p.92). Since then, there has been the long-standing debate as to whether to standardize or localize (adapt) the marketing strategy. Several marketing researches have started to take into account the cultural and market changes brought about by the flows of ideas, people, technologies and media (Appadurai 1990) in the market environments, and their consequent behaviour on companies. A specific call made by Douglas & Craige (2011) that there need to be closer consideration of the influence of environmental factors on the decisions of marketing practitioners and research into the impact of contemporary cultural change-producing forces going on in the world where the restrictions between cultures are becoming more and more porous. Hence, the main objective of this research was to investigate the potential convergence of a global strategy and the manner in which marketing and culture interact; to find out how culture determines the localization or standardization of a marketing strategy, and to establish which components of the marketing strategy should be standardized or localized. 3. Review of literature 3.1 The International Marketing Environment The inimitability of international marketing derives its source from a wide range of exotic and untried events existing in the business environment and the diversity of approaches required to manage and deal with the