Cultural Context

Cultural Context — perception is coded by where you are

Psycho-logic works on perceived reality, and perception is written in a local language you don't automatically speak. A guarantee that reads as "confident" in one market reads as "desperate — why would they promise that?" in another. Cheapness signals "smart value" here and "they cut corners, how disrespectful" there. Before you reframe, signal, or redesign a moment, establish the local rules for what the move will mean. This is the lens; market-recon is the fieldwork.

The principle

Sutherland's levers all act on perception, and perception is set by culture — so the same lever, unchanged, produces different behaviour in different markets. The default failure is exporting a home-market playbook and assuming the psychology transfers. It doesn't. What transfers is the method (find the perception, not the metric); the content of "premium," "trust," "safe," and "expensive" is local and must be re-derived per market.

The dimensions that rewire the moves

Treat these as hypotheses about the target market — dials, not verdicts. For each move you're about to make, ask which dials bend it.

• Uncertainty avoidance — how much reassurance, detail, guarantee, and precedent people need before acting. High-avoidance markets reward explicit guarantees, credentials, and "everyone else does this too"; low-avoidance ones find the same reassurance patronising. (bends costly-signaling, experience-design)
• Individualism vs collectivism — does "what you gain" persuade, or "what your family/group/neighbours will think"? Social proof and belonging beat personal-benefit copy in collectivist markets. (bends reframing, costly-signaling)
• Status & power distance — whether visible hierarchy, prestige, and authority attract or repel. Status signals that lift desire in one market read as vulgar or untrustworthy in another. (bends reframing, costly-signaling)
• High- vs low-context communication — how explicit the message must be. Low-context markets (e.g. much of the US) want it spelled out; high-context ones (e.g. Japan) read tone, restraint, and what's left unsaid — over-explaining signals mistrust. (bends every message and reframe)
• Mental-accounting & price norms — what "expensive" means, whether round or .99 prices signal quality, whether haggling is expected, which pocket a cost lands in. Price framing is not portable. (bends reframing)
• Trust locus — where credibility comes from: institutions and certifications, personal relationships and introductions, or peer reviews and ratings. Aim your costly signal at the local source of trust. (bends costly-signaling)
• Taboo & sacredness — what must not be joked about, discounted, rushed, or made "fun." Cross this and no clever frame survives it. Critical in death, health, money, religion, and family. (vetoes moves that violate it)

How to apply

1. Define the market precisely. Not "Japan" but "urban Kanto seniors" or "rural Kansai families." Country is the coarsest unit; region-within-country, urban/rural, generation, and subculture often matter more.
2. List the moves you were about to make (the reframe, the signal, the felt-moment fix from the other skills).
3. Run each move through the dials. For every move ask: in this market, does it still mean what I intend? Which dimension flips it? Rewrite the move to the local reading, or drop it.
4. Get the live data, don't reason from stereotype. These dimensions generate hypotheses; a stereotype applied confidently is a trap. Send the specifics to market-recon to check against real local players, and to counterintuitive-tests to validate cheaply before rollout.
5. Never let a taboo be "optimised." If a move crosses a local sacredness line, no efficiency gain is worth it — cut it first.

日本語の使用例

• 「US で当たった訴求をそのまま日本で出したい」→ 心理は輸出できない。高コンテクスト＋高不確実性回避の日本では、はっきり言い切る強い断定コピーや過剰な説明が「押しつけがましい/信用できない」と読まれる。手法は同じでも中身（"高級""安心"の意味）は市場ごとに作り直す。
• 「値下げで攻めれば地方でも勝てるはず」→ 価格の意味は非携帯。地域や世代によって "安い＝手抜き/失礼" と読まれる。安さを出す前に、その市場での価格の読まれ方を確認。
• 「レビュー星の数を前面に出す」→ 信頼の所在が市場で違う。紹介・地域の評判・寺や医師の推薦が効く層に、他人のレビューは刺さらないことがある。シグナルは"その土地の信頼の源"に向ける。
• 葬儀/シニア領域：タブー/神聖さが最優先の制約。割引・カジュアル化・スピード訴求は文脈次第で不謹慎に転ぶ。さらに関東/関西で葬送慣習（骨上げ・通夜の位置づけ等）が異なるため、「日本」ではなく地域単位で知覚ルールを立ててから reframing / costly-signaling / experience-design に渡す。

Cross-check against the canon

Sanity-check any cultural read against these; if it contradicts one, name the contradiction and justify it. When a claim is load-bearing or the user asks for evidence or fresh examples, web-search the named theory or case and cite what you find.

• Geert Hofstede, cultural dimensions — the source of the uncertainty-avoidance / individualism / power-distance dials; use his country scores as a first hypothesis, never a verdict.
• Edward T. Hall, high- vs low-context communication — the original framework behind "what's left unsaid" cultures.
• Erin Meyer, The Culture Map — the practitioner's update: the relative position between two cultures matters more than either one's absolute score.
• The ecological-fallacy caveat (McSweeney's critique of Hofstede) — dimension scores are country-level averages; applying them to an individual buyer or a subculture is a statistical error. That's exactly why market-recon exists.

Related skills

• psycho-logic — the router; this is its Step 0 (establish who and where before choosing a move)
• market-recon — turn these cultural hypotheses into live, sourced data on the actual target market
• reframing / costly-signaling / experience-design — the moves whose content this lens localises
• counterintuitive-tests — validate the localised move on behaviour before committing