Jo,
I agree, it's inappropriate marketing. A couple of almost related comments:
The Americans have Thanksgiving at the end of November as well as Christmas at the end of December. When I was working in Chicago I found the 'holiday mood' kicked in far earlier than in any other place I'd worked. Now I work for an overseas subsidiary of an American company, dependent on the US for a lot of information and product, I find it frustrating because they didn't think to remind us in advance that their offices were going to be closed for a four day weekend, which added to time differences meant we wouldn't get responses to a question asked on Wednesday until the following Tuesday at the earliest...
I have bought clothing from a US retailer on-line. They now regularly send me catalogues. Their accounts department have noticed that in July Australia introduced a new tax and all the catalogues now include a note explaining the effect of this on prices for customers in Australia. Their marketing department have not yet noticed that December is summer in the southern hemisphere and it is not a good time to send catalogues advertising warm, fleecy, knitted, 'snug' clothing....
(NB - I am not against all things American! It just happens that there are a great many more American multinationals out there able to commit this kind of idiocy, so they are top of mind. ALso, I wonder whether having a larger domestic market they are able to get to a certain size and inflexibility before they have to learn the lessons of internationalisation?)
