One of my favourite books is called French Children Don’t Throw Food. I was thrilled by the idea I could help my young kids be better behaved and more open-minded eaters.

I finished the book with some definite food for thought (pun intended) on parenting styles, but also on how to approach cultural differences. France has better-behaved children. France also has heavily subsidised childcare and a national school lunch menu. Could I really achieve one without the other?

Don’t get me wrong – culture differences are real. As an expat Canadian living in Europe, I was amazed at the differences between not only different European countries, but between areas within each country.

Languages, accents, customs and beliefs all feed into how we think and behave. It’s really easy (and tempting) to stop there and just resign yourself to the fact that different cultures behave differently. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time working with different people in different countries, and it’s become clear it’s more than that. Culture is a handy excuse to stop looking and it’s the least actionable answer available.

French kids eat better – some of that is cultural, but a huge part of that is thanks to the infrastructure built to help parents carry the load. Subsidised healthcare (and camps during the holidays), national school lunches and tax relief for families are all benefits offered to French parents. This offers the French significant relief (both in terms of time and money) on the child-rearing ‘basics’, and gives them the luxury of reallocating those resources to other things.

The relief is from policy, and how they decide to spend this surplus of resources is culture. For the French, that’s food and manners. Other countries would likely choose alternative paths. Both factors are interesting, but one doesn’t happen without the other.

From another angle, I spent several years working for a telco company which operated brands across different countries in Europe. Whenever we wanted to launch a new product, research would need to take place at a broad product level, and then smaller pieces of work would happen in each individual market to ‘cater for taste’. Again, it never ceased to amaze me how these ‘tastes’ were discussed like they were a matter of national character. As a (relatively new) outsider to these differences, I would ask: “Why is that?” a few more times than my more established European colleagues.

Often it would emerge these differences had more to do with the precedent set by the ’incumbent’ (BT in the UK, Deutsche Telekom in Germany etc) decades earlier. The southern telcos pioneered bundles, so people tended to like to get everything in one bill. The German and UK telcos historically priced things separately, so people now tended to prefer things that way. Again – it was historic infrastructure leading behaviour, not a ‘quirk’ of the culture.

Even currencies play a factor. In the UK, TV viewing is measured via the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (Barb), a Joint Industry Committee (JIC) formed by UK broadcasters and advertising agencies (the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising). I sat on this board as a representative for Channel 4.

How they measure things is based on a combination of what they need to achieve and the tools available to do it. Fortunately for the UK, they do this very well (and are seen as internationally groundbreaking in many ways), but the process and the outcomes are entirely in their hands. Our way of looking at viewing isn’t because UK TV watching is so unique, it’s because our broadcasters and advertising agencies built it that way.

Finally, on a smaller scale, my library recently encouraged me to sign up for an app that let me borrow books digitally. I went from not having taken anything out of the library in years, to having read 11 books over a four-month period. That was a change in my reading infrastructure, not in my personal beliefs, values or customs.

So, for those of you who look at behaviours or attitudes across different countries – the next time your data shows a cultural difference, treat it as the beginning of the analysis rather than the end. If you’re looking to change the way customers behave (or protect yourself if you’re currently benefitting from their current behaviours), take a closer look. Is there a policy, structure or provision that sits underneath? Structure can be changed, and the behaviours will follow.

As insight professionals, it’s our job to dig deep and really understand our customers. Mistake structure for culture and you’re wrong before you even start. Plus, I’ve definitely seen a French kid throw food.

Sarah Clerkson is insight and strategy director at Audience Strategies and at Steadman, and is formerly director of audience insight at Channel 4