This paper investigates the cultural diversity between Africans and Indians in Durban, South
Africa, based on marketing communication. While cross-cultural marketing research has been
concentrated on Western and Eastern societies, there is a lack of such research in Africa. The
study examines the cultural values of Africans and Indians based on the individualism-collectivism
cultural dimension, adapted to account for marketing communication-specific cultural values
(MCSCV). The study was a quantitative study which used judgmental sampling technique to
recruit subjects and analysed data using the t-test. Surveys were completed by 283 African and 92
Indian respondents at the main shopping malls in two of Durban’s renowned African and Indian
townships viz. Umlazi and Chatsworth, respectively. The findings of the study revealed that Indian
respondents showed more individualistic tendencies toward marketing communication, as
compared to their African counterparts. The study highlights that target markets’ indigenous
cultural values may not necessarily serve as predictors for market segmentation. The study further
shows that directing stereotypical marketing communication strategies toward culturally
homogeneous markets based on indigenous cultural dispositions, without investigating the
compatibility of both cultural contexts, can be deleterious. The paper builds on current thinking in
cross-cultural marketing literature and develops an orientation of MCSCV.