Cosmetics companies are striving to understand how their products are used differently in their various emerging markets. Presumably, they are elsewhere looking at differences in meaning, in addition to simply understanding usage.

Crucial to that effort is the search for differences that could help build a brand in critical emerging markets like India and China. L’Oreal has an expanding network of 13 evaluation centers around the world created to observe grooming and ponder a variety of burning questions: Do national differences exist in primping styles? Would women in Japan and Europe, for instance, stroke on mascara with the same lavish hand? (The answer is that in Japan, women apply mascara with an average of 100 brush strokes compared with Europeans, who are satisfied with 50, a difference noted by ethnologists for L’Oreal.)

It was observations like these that ultimately affected how the company made and marketed its mascaras or developed the foaming quality of its shampoos. “We are far from understanding everybody everywhere. It takes time,” said Fabrice Aghassian, director of international product evaluation for L’Oreal, which is seeking to map the world’s beauty routines in a landscape the company calls geocosmetics. “When we know the behaviors of people, we know what unexpressed expectations we do have to consider.”

See the full list at Snark Hunting – anonymous names (such as John Doe in the US) from around the world
Australia Fred Nurk, Joe Farnarkle
Austria Hans Meier, Hans Maier, Hans Mayer, Herr und Frau Osterreicher
Belgium Jan Janssen, Piet Pietersen
Brazil Beltrano, Ciclano, Fulano, Ze ninguem, Joao da Silva, Ze da Silva, Joao Ninguem, Maria Ninguem
Canada G. Raymond

Wired has a nice history of Samsung

In his 1996 New Year’s address, Lee proclaimed the Year of Design Revolution. He was referring to design in the broadest sense – not just styling but consumer research and marketing as well. Engineers had once defined new products and decided what features to give them; now specialists in everything from industrial design to cognitive science would take that role. When Lee issued his decree, ‘most of us didn’t understand what he was talking about, ‘ says Kook-hyun Chung, the senior vice president who heads the Corporate Design Center in Seoul. ‘Now we understand that we have a new, bigger, broader responsibility.