Cultural Awareness In Business

The world is getting smaller due to the advancement of communication technology and transport. The development of world economy brought people together from different cultures, languages, backgrounds and nations. People are doing business, meeting and communicating each other more than before. This advancement in technology helps us to understand each other more intimately and the cultural differences between people are diminishing now-a-days. But actually it is not the truth. As we come closer to each other our differences become highlighted, when we realize rest of the world is not as same as we believe. This problem is more prominent in the field of business. While dealing with foreign colleagues, customers and clients, only few businesses will withstand the requirements of the industry over a period of time. If a business organization wants to grow and become international, it has to offer international standards. Very little competition was faced by the European, British and American organizations while doing business abroad about twenty years ago because of the lack of competitive industrialized nations. At that point of time doing business was easy. But today countries like India, Korea, Japan, China, Brazil and Mexico are some of the world’s largest economies. More countries are involved in business and therefore competition is also there for getting business. According to western organizations, lack of cultural sensitivity can affect the business performance.

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Cultural sensitivity training and language lessons are provided to the staff by many organizations. Cultural sensitivity training is to handle issues like communication styles, negotiation approaches, protocol and etiquette. Language lessons are provided to understand the foreign markets. Businesses that appreciate the cultural sensitivity of people or nations can create longer and prosperous relationships with others in this competitive world. Even after introducing cultural sensitivity in to the business, the progress is seems to be slow. The reason for this is the cultural superiority reigning in the subconscious sense. Cultural superiority is futile because the inhabitants of this world are from various cultures, faiths, experiences and world views. We all are different from each other in religious, cultural, political or linguistic matter and therefore doing business abroad need cultural sensitivity. Cultural sensitivity is a sense of flexibility, creativity and empathy through cultural knowledge. Business also has to go a long way by facing hardships, like any other things in our life. The importance of learning the lessons on cultural sensitivity can be understood by seeing some examples in which the lack of cultural sensitivity resulted in the failure of the company, product or individual. To brief cultural sensitivity, you can divide it in to two categories namely culture and language. There many types of culture which include areas like lifestyle, behavior, mentality, history, politics and faith. Here are some examples to show the failure due to lack of cultural sensitivity:

• “When Microsoft colored 800,000 pixels on an India map, they colored different shade of green to eight of them to show the territory of disputed Kashmir. The Kashmir was shown as non-Indian in the map by coloring in shades of green and the map was banned in India immediately. In order to heal the diplomatic wounds, Microsoft had to withdraw all the 20,000 copies of this Windows 95 operating system which cost them millions.
• “A new TV ad was targeted to the Chinese consumer by the fast food giant McDonald’s and spent thousands for that ad. The ad is pictured as a Chinese man is kneeling down and begging before a vendor of McDonald’s to take his expired discount coupon. This ad by McDonald’s was pulled from TV commercials due to the lack of cultural sensitivity. In Chinese culture begging is considered as shameful and the ad caused huge hue and cry among Chinese people.
• “US firm Gerber used the same packaging as in the US when they started selling baby food in Africa i.e. the label consist of the picture of the baby. Sales of this baby food were a flop and the firm soon understood that companies of Africa usually put pictures of contents on the labels.

Language

The world of business is in difficulty due to poor translations which causes great embarrassment to the perpetrators. This is because of the lack of cultural sensitivity and here are some examples. Looking to take a foreign trip overseas, find out here how Dialog One provides better services for you.

“A workbench called FARTFULL which is not a popular product was tried to sell by IKEA.
“When Clairol and the Irish alcoholic drink Irish Mist launched their products in Germany, they did not consider the German language properly. The hair curling iron “Mist Stick” of Clairol and the drink “Irish Mist” were flopped because “Mist” in German is “manure”.
“Japanese have a specific style in naming their products and they gave names to gems like “Germ bread”, “Shito Mix”, “coolpis” and “homo soap”.
“In India a new facial cream named “joni” was proposed for marketing. In Hindi the word Joni means “genitals of a female” and therefore they changed the name.
“Turn it loose” is the slogan of Coors but when the slogan is translated in to Spanish; it will become “suffer from diarrhea”.
By conducting a basic research on the concept, shape, color, design, packaging, message etc in the target countries or culture, it is easy to avoid mistakes as in the examples cited above. Most of the business organizations are thinking that if it can go smoothly here, then it is OK for others also. For the success of a business internationally, the organizations have to develop personal interaction and relationships with clients of each culture.

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