Sociocultural Causes and Effects
There are many ways for a company to gain international recognition; the most common way is to use the media, or word of mouth. The same goes for other trends, which is how socioculture is spread.
We define socioculture as a trend in society that spreads globally. A good example can be social networking sites, like Facebook, and from their statistics, there are " More than 65 million active users " {6}. Branding also plays a big part in socioculture. Many people know what "Nike" is as well as "McDonald's". In both cases, their brand name is spread by word-of-mouth and through the media.
The media plays the biggest part in spreading socioculture. Now in the modern era where many people watch television, advertising on broadcast networks can "cost up to $500,000 for 30 seconds" {7}. This is even when more people are being exposed to cable networks and the internet. Advertisers are also willing to pay " more than $300 million to producers and the big broadcast networks" {8} to have their products placed in shows, all just to get a larger exposure.
The number of Internet users increased from 30 million in 1996 to 1.319 billion in December 2007. With the extensive use of the Internet over the world, the Internet can be used as an efficient mode of media and advertising, as it would be able to reach out to a larger audience. {11}
This advertising is caused because of the technological advances, and all these advertisements have become a way of life, and some brands have become a part of socioculture.
Even though a way of spreading socioculture is to get public exposure through many means, sometimes it is the people that want to be noticed; Hence the introduction of the social-networking sites. These sites allow you to put your profile up on to the internet for the public to view. It has become a form of socioculture as it has become a worldwide phenomenon in nearly every different kind of society.
A reason for these social-networking sites being picked up so quickly is partly because people want to get noticed, and also because of the idea of making new friends. In the age where being popular is the aim of everybody, social-networking sites provide a way to be noticed. Another reason is also because people want to have a way of communicating with their current friends. This leads to a form of socioculture, where people are linked to each other on the net.
With this kind of socioculture, there are people who are trying to exploit it for their own use. Companies are now using these social-networking sites to advertise their products. The same goes for blogs. By seeing what type of content that is put there, they can determine the type of advertising they can put there. So in a way, there will always be a form socioculture.
Socioculture has only started booming recently and there would still be increases and changes in socioculture in the decades to come. As technology increases, there would be much more changes in the future, in every area of globalisation.