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Melissa Lecini overcoming cultural barriers

Main reasons for a company to start looking outside its domestic market

A company might start looking for a business abroad due to several reasons. Increasing sales and profitability is probably the most important one. Going global can provide new sources of revenue, offer great returns on your investment, and secure long-term success for your business. In addition, the Internet makes it easier to reach out to the world because it destroyed the distance between us and our customers.

Another reason might be to enter new markets and sell products to foreign buyers where that product may not exist. By going global, they could also outmaneuver their competitors by entering a new overseas market that competitors haven’t entered. Another reason could be to enlarge the customer base, possibly via e-commerce or a collaborative sales partnership. Companies could also go global to make use of excess capacity off-season due to seasonal fluctuations. A company might go global to create new jobs and support the home country or the one in which they operate.

Problems in marketing and advertising products in different countries

Culture is one of the most important problems, followed by linguistic confusions, laws, and the economic and political climate. Global customers have considerable cultural and social diversities in terms of needs, preferences, habits, languages, expectations, buying capacities, buying, and consumption patterns.

For example, humor is often used in commercial messages to get the consumer to pay attention. But what is considered extremely funny in one culture can be perceived as confusing or insulting in another. To produce effective advertising requires more than accurate translation of the message from one language to another. It requires a deep understanding of the culture, morals, and even religious views that predominate in a country.

If a company has cultural sensitivity and local knowledge of the culture it is going to operate with, it will have higher quality and targeted marketing. The sales, revenues, and reputation are going to benefit from it.

Business executives from different countries can encounter several barriers to effective communication besides language differences. The pace of business negotiations can be different. Americans want to hurry negotiations along, whereas in some other countries, emphasis is placed on building relationships before a business deal is seriously considered. Executives from other countries may place a higher value on things such as facial expression instead of just the words being said. Even with technologies such as video conferencing, executives in other countries may prefer to establish relationships on a personal level. Time zone differences can make it difficult to coordinate projects where collaboration is required.

Barriers can give a competitive edge - summary

Companies start working in global markets to avoid domestic saturation. But working across cultures poses special problems due to the cultural influences. This article provides examples of the mistakes made by companies that did not take into account these differences.

Firstly, a lot of companies had to face the mistake of value translation from one culture to another. One example might be the Vauxhall Nova. These mistakes can be avoided by repositioning brands and changing advertisements to suit local sensitivities. Another big problem is the cultural differences of multinational employees; however, this could also be seen as a source of competitive advantage for the companies that learn to work with cultural differences and benefit from them.

Vauxhall

The Vauxhall Nova represented the first attempt by General Motors' European operation to launch a supermini. The little car (called the 'Opel Corsa' on the continent) had basic yet classic 3-box styling but was bang up to date underneath that legendary bodywork. There was a vast range of trim levels and engines, as Vauxhall attempted to create the perfect Nova for just about everyone. “Nova”, though, in Spanish simply translates into “doesn’t work” (“no va”) and resulted in nearly no sales in the Spanish region. Luckily, it was sold as the Opel Corsa in the rest of the world.

• Stop expanding its market share
• Reach market saturation
• Making the first move
• Start dipping their toes into foreign waters
• Where everything becomes similar
• Leading to cultural convergence
• Be influenced by culture
• Will usually first feel the effects of culture on differences
• Based on deeper cultural divides
• Adapt to different ways of doing things
• Made worse

Linguistic confusion is also compounded by a chance to be better than competitors and a source of competitive advantage to adopt best practices from others.

Melissa Lecini communicating across cultures

Process of recognizing differences

Cross-cultural communication is the process of recognizing both differences and similarities among cultural groups to effectively engage and improve communication with one another. In today’s rapidly changing professional world, it’s critical to gain an understanding of how cultural elements influence communication between individuals and groups in the workplace. Developing strong cross-cultural communication skills is the first step in creating a successful work environment that brings out the best in all of an organization’s team members.

Ten strategies for effective cross-culture communication

• Avoid stereotyping
• Distinguish perspective
• Listen actively
• Respect differences
• Be honest
• Build self-awareness
• Be flexible
• Recognize the complexity
• Think twice

Communicating across the cultural divide — summary

The article is about the problem of working with people from different cultures. In the past, company leaders used to travel to interact with foreign people, but now everything has changed deeply thanks to innovative technology. When working across cultures, it’s essential to recognize the difference in cultural behaviors and personality traits to learn how to adapt behavior in your communication style.

Research examined different behaviors (The Big Five) from chiefs and managers all around the world and found that not only personality traits are very different from country to country, but also working methods, for example, working alone (China) or in-group (UK and EU countries).

The importance of understanding local culture

In your own country, what action should a company take if one of its products is found to be faulty and may cause injury to users? Customers have rights: they can choose, within a reasonable time, whether they want a replacement, refund, or repair of the item. There are several laws that protect customers. If the fault is minor and can be fixed, the retailer can choose to repair the item, replace it, or refund the money. Normally, the laws cover products that don’t do what they are supposed to do. A product should be satisfactory, free from any small faults, and last a reasonable time.