Another Cultural Difference

A look at cultural differences through free Property Magazines: France & America.

I was sorting through lots of papers some time ago (in fact I think I did a post about all of that) and came across two property magazines picked up on holidays: one European, one American.  Before throwing them away, I enjoyed observing the cultural differences between them.  So we have "IMMO 16-17 Charente" from August 2002 (France) and "Showcase Wickenburg" from August 2004 (Arizona).

The first obvious difference is that the American magazine has gone for quantity over quality.  There are many more pages and each house description takes up more room, however only black, red & blue ink is used (pictures are only black and white).  The French magazine is much more colourful and printed on better quality paper, but much thinner.  Do European consumers value quality over quantity compared with Americans - food may be a parallel for this.

Another striking difference is the emphasis on the actual agents in the American magazine - placing pictures of people in cowboy hats at the top of most pages.  There were very few pictures of people in the French magazine.  Perhaps this indicates that America is a much more personal society than Europe.  This would seem to follow the general view that emphasis is placed more on customer service in America  and is probably also a result of the more entreprenerial society.  The French estate agents looked more like proper companies than individual franchisees and this was emphasised by the fact there were less names and more logos ("Agence L'Atrium" vs "Carol Casey Realty Executive")

Other smaller differences include the absence of a legal notice about equality in the French magazine or articles supposedly offering advice on home buying.  Perhaps this reflects slightly on the different legal systems.  The final comparison I wanted to note that, although the French magazine is 2 years older, a minority of agents have listed websites or even email addresses whereas almost all of the American agents have at least an email, with many having websites too.  This probably confirms that France was behind in adopting the Internet.

Overall I prefer the french magazine, it is more durable and the pictures are much easier to see and the language also seems to be much more formal and I expect I am used to the less personal nature of business in Europe.