MTV In India: The Role Of Divergent Culture

IHRM Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Course Date MTV in India Culture is defined as a set of different aspects such as beliefs, language, values, and practices that are common and shared by a given group of people; all these can collectively define that group. In business, cultures largely influence how businesses operate, and an organization from a given country must pay attention to the culture of the country it wants to venture in for it to succeed. This essay will analyze at a case study of MTV in India using Andre Laurent’s view on the role of divergent culture to an organization. MTV, a subsidiary of Viacom entered in India in 1991 and soon it ranked top as a music channel. India was a compelling market owing to the flourishing middle class, open-minded audience and a growing GDP and the massive population appeared favorable to MTV. However, even with all these pointers, it only generated $25 million, and this was not the expected success. The reasons MTV did not do well owe to some factors; the Indian cable market was very still with more than a 100 channels, all of which were going between $1-2 per month. Secondly, MTV is majorly a music channel, and Indian families owned at least one TV set, and therefore MTV competed with news and soap operas. These factors greatly handicapped the progress of MTV, and I had to scheme out new ways of concurring the market. It opted to partner with other channels and raise the cost to $3 per month but this only earned all the channel $5 million out of the almost $50million in revenue. It also exported some shows to Indians living in other countries as well as partnering with companies to air programs that would appeal to the audience. In order to increase its revenue, it went into the business of fragrances, apparel, CDs and together with Citibank, they allowed buyers to use their credit card CITATION Goi10 \l 1033 (Going Global (G): MTV India, 2010). Andre Laurent, a divergent cultural theorist, encourages international organization that wants to do well in a given nation to localize and pay heed to the specific aspects of the given nation they are investing in. He argues that there is no homeland for management CITATION And83 \l 1033 (Laurent, The Cultural diversity of Western Conceptions of Management, 1983) and organizations cannot have a specific management plan for all cultures owing to the different way of life. Localization would have been the best tool for MTV rather than venturing in the market as standardized CITATION Hil03 \l 1033 (Gunther, 2004). MTV has managed to localize in other countries perfectly; China sends the message of family union whereas India is colorful, street culture, humorous and self-effacing. What MTV had in mind when entering India was that it could introduce a little bit of America and so it entered there as MTV, it was later understood that the target audience, mostly the young and middle class were not familiar with the rock and pop music portrayed CITATION Hil03 \l 1033 (Gunther, 2004). This greatly failed because a nation's culture determines consumption of products, it either acts in favor or disfavor CITATION Sur19 \l 1033 (Haron, 2016) a...