lunes, 28 de marzo de 2011

The Cultural Environment of Global Markets

During our academic life period we study how different factors affect international business, especially how culture can play along with us or jeopardize an international negotiation in another country. Culture helps us understand how people behave in different situation, how they interact with other people and how easily is to approach in a business context. In order to do that, it’s required a high knowledge of the customs successful in other environments different from ours. 


After reading many definitions of culture, it can be well define as “The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group[1]”. In this globalize world, our success will highly depend in how much knowledge we have on different cultures and how we can use that information to venture our business into those countries.




There are many ways we can know about culture of foreign countries such as newspapers who constantly inform us, a pen pal friend or network friend or the internet which all the times is giving us information behavior and customs., in other hand is the information provide by people who surround us much of the time, such as teachers, friend or family that has more experience and knowledge. Thanks to the globalization tons and tons of information travels around the world and go through our computers stuffing ourselves of valuable information which can be use as a powerful tools to expand our business geographically.  It important how the geography can affect the culture and behavior of a population, as a perfect example we can name our own country Colombia. People from the shore do not have the same customs than people from interior. Knowing this we can use this information to create a unify system to approach to those markets we try to conquer.   


In our context most people think that religion and beliefs are the most important things to know about foreign culture but most of us forget about history, what is behind the society that shapes the human conduct. “One of the first barriers that companies face on the path of internationalization is differences in natural languages. Surprisingly though, language in international business remains an ignored research field[2]”. Language and culture play and important role in international context whether you want to talk with some in a informal context or trying to merchandise a new product in a foreign country. Knowing the language will make thing easier to communicate with the future customers or co works in the new environment. This particularly case can be use in some countries in Europe where there are more than one language such as Switzerland, in this country any multinational enterprises who want to entre in this market will need to make marketing in at least German and French.


Doing an easy exercise, we can see how many different industries exist around the world and how each one is looking every day a strategy to differentiate from others. I’d like to use as an example the food industry, which have to adopt their recopies in every country they want to sale their products. This is a huge challenge because in order to gain customers, is a need to change the original recopies and adapt them to the national culture. As an example we can use Mc Donald’s in India, in this case when the multination food company opened the restaurant in India, they adapted the whole menu to the country needs and customs, such as changing meat for pork. The food industry has to face different cultures and adapt to those new patterns in order to success.


In order to see how culture evolves and adapts depending of the country, it’s important to mention how our compatriots who live in foreign countries adapts they way of living, the food and behaviors to blend into the new host country. It is common to see in New York an arepas stand or in Madrid someone selling bandejas paisas. In contrast of this there are people or countries who do not accept foreign cultures as easy as or neighbors do, this behavior can be call xenophobia. 


These expressions of hate or displeasure for new cultures make people life and have wrong moments and memories about an specific country. This can occur in the international business context, where a foreign company gets a bad perception of the country and decide not to invest in new projects or worse take the company to another place.




The world changes every day and the culture evolves in every country each day, changing peoples habits, tastes, living styles, behavior and values.  Therefore is our duty to the study those instantly changes to understand how those changes affects our life, our business and our interaction to this world.


Finally, in order to create good marketing strategies we must know a complete and thorough appreciation of the origins (geography, history, political, economic and social backgrounds) and elements such as (cultural, rituals, symbols, beliefs, and ways of thinking)  of any culture, to focus all the effort in create the right market strategy to conquer the new market.




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