Formats: ePub, Mobi, PDF

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around
the World Live and Buy as They Do

French-born marketing consultant and psychoanalyst Rapaille takes
a truism.different cultures are, well, different.and expands it by
explaining how a nation's history and cultural myths are psychological
templates to which its citizens respond unconsciously. Fair enough,
but after that, it's all downhill. Rapaille intends his theory of
culture codes to help us understand "why people do what they do," but
the "fundamental archetypes" he offers are just trumped-up stereotypes.
He often supports jarring pronouncements ("The Culture Code for
perfection in America is DEATH") with preposterous generalizations and
overstatements, e.g., Japanese men "seem utterly incapable of courtship
or wooing a woman." Writing with the naivete of someone who has learned
about the world only through Hollywood films, he seems unaware that
every person living within a nation's borders doesn't necessarily share
the same cultural biases and references. Rapaille's successful
consulting career is evidence that he's more convincing in the boardroom
than he is on the page. Amid the overheated prose and dubious factoids,
it's easy to overlook the book's scattered marketing proposals and
employee-management tips.

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