Welcome to Global Impact Cultural Psychology. One of the defining features of the 21st century is the globalization of the marketplace. A proliferation of global brands brings diverse cultures to our consumer population, that is also growing culturally diverse. This course will enable students to understand how globalization changes consumers at a psychological level, and will provide you with frameworks to envision how to imbue brands with cultural meanings, or for creating iconic brands that can resonate with global consumers. The course is based on the notion that culture exists not only in the mind, as values and beliefs endorse by people, but also in the environment as objects, institutions, products and brands. The course also emphasizes that globalization is creating multicultural spaces in contemporary societies. Furthermore, consumers can use the cultural meaning of a brand to build their identities or to assimilate the brand's cultural symbolism, or reject the brand's cultural meanings by exhibiting exclusionary reactions. The course will provide students with a framework to predict when a simulation versus exclusionary reactions are more likely to occur. As well as to devise strategies for imbuing brands with cultural meanings that can elevate them to the status of a cultural icon. Specifically, we're reviewing module one, what globalization is and what forces are connected to it, as well as discuss in detail the concept of culture, how culture manifests itself within the person as well as in objects and brands, a whole cultural orientations vary around the world. We'll close module one by acknowledging that because culture can manifest itself in brands, brands can have cultural significance for consumers, or what were referred to as "cultural equity". Module two zooms in on culture as a knowledge representation in the mind of consumers. Furthermore, we emphasize here the case of consumers with knowledge about more than one culture, also known as "bi-cultural" or "multicultural" consumers. We'll discuss in detail how culture can be brought to the fore of our mind to guide our judgments and behaviors. We referred to this effect as assimilation to our cultural frame of mind. In module three, we'll analyze the increasingly common phenomenon of culture mixing, or the juxtaposition of contrasted cultural symbols in the same pace at the same time. We will learn that culture mixing can trigger positive or negative responses depending on a variety of personal and contextual factors. Finally, in module four, we put all of our learnings together to present a framework that is helpful for building iconic brand in multicultural markets. The dynamic for the course is as follows: For each module, you will have a list of readings and videos to watch. Modules also include a variety of learning activities including in video questions, quizzes, written exercises and case discussions. You can find the details about the different activities in the course website. By engaging in this various learning activities, you will increase your understanding of how globalization changes consumers at a psychological level, and how to create iconic brands that can resonate with global consumers. More specifically, there are four key lessons that you will take away from this course. First, brands can acquire cultural meanings and become icons of a culture that are reviewed by consumers. Second, culture is represented in our heads as a network of elements linked to a central concept. When this network is activated in our minds, as when encountering an iconic brand, we exhibit a tendency to assimilate our behavior to what our culture prescribes. Third, products can sometimes mix cultural meanings, which can lead to unfavorable consumer responses under certain circumstances. Fourth, building iconic brands require a deep cultural understanding of the brand and its market, as well as to carefully align all the marketing activities to communicate a culturally relevant brand identity. Are you ready to expand your knowledge about globalization and cultural psychology? Great. Let's begin.