India: Socio Cultural Analysis

Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

“India”

Empresa, cultura y negocios en el mundo
February 2nd of 2012

Introduction
India is a country with 3,287,263 sq km, is the 7th biggest country in the world, it border with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, China, Nepal and Pakistan.
They have different languages Hindi 41%, Bengali 8.1%, Telugu 7.2%, Marathi 7%, Tamil 5.9%,Urdu 5%, Gujarati 4.5%, Kannada 3.7%, Malayalam 3.2%, Oriya 3.2%, Punjabi 2.8%, Assamese 1.3%, Maithili 1.2%, other 5.9%.
The population is about 1,189,172,906 persons
Socio-Cultural Analysis
Religion and how it affects human behavior for consumption, country acceptance and the negotiation process.
In India the main religions are: Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other1.8%, unspecified 0.1%
1. Hinduism - Originating in the Vedic civilization of India (second and first millennium B.C.), Hinduism is an extremely diverse set of beliefs and practices with no single founder or religious authority. Hinduism has many scriptures; the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita are among some of the most important. Hindus may worship one or many deities, usually withprayer rituals within their own home. The most common figures of devotion are the gods Vishnu, Shiva, and a mother goddess, Devi. Most Hindus believe the soul, or atman, is eternal, and goes through a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth (samsara) determined by one's positive or negative karma, or the consequences of one's actions. The goal of religious life is to learn to act so as to finallyachieve liberation (moksha) of one's soul, escaping the rebirth cycle. 

The Hinduism is not only a religion, is a way of living; they believe that they soul rebirth in a human body in order to learn and eliminate defects or how they call it “psychological defects” (defects that are created by your mind and repress your soul). They pray and work every day in themselves in order to achieveenlightenment through awareness of the world. They believe that it exist “karma” that is a process of cause and effect; so if you cheated your wife in the other life, because of karma in this life you will be cheat. Also it exist the “dharma” also the process of cause and effect but in a positive way; e.g. if you help people or you do good actions your karma will disappear.
At the end, the goal of a lifeis to achieve the liberation of your soul, escaping of the karma, defects and the rebirth cycle.
In India Hinduism is the main religion, also the 80% of the population practice it, so Indians have a very special way of life, they believe on chakras and they meditate at least one time per day. These beliefs may affect the consumption, because they try to don’t eat meat, principally of cow becauseit is sainted according to Krishna their god.
They are mainly vegetarians, in India it exist three types of vegetarians: Pure vegetarians (they only eat fruits, vegetables, and seeds), Brahmana vegetarians (they do not eat garlic, onion and mushrooms) and the non-vegetarians (they eat meat, in some cases even of cow). Only in two states of India is legal to kill a cow (Bengala and Kerala).
Withthese tradition Indians become an exigent market, they worried about the welfare of their own and their families, they are against the consumption, and they try to be with their inner inself. They live with a different awareness that ours.
In the negotiation process it affects in the part of the products, they try to buy healthy things (like vegetables or fruit part of their diet), and in thepart of negotiating with women, because they still having older ideas those men command; even in the top of the corporations they all are men.

Hofstede Analysis


Power Distance: This dimension show us that there is a big power distance,in India it exist the Castes System that divide the society acording their status;although the government is trying to change this implementig new laws,...