No room for ‘judgment’
The juicy international arena… that’s what’s hot now. Everyone is talking about getting their brand extended abroad, promoting their products elsewhere and satisfying consumers from around the world. It all sounds nice and dandy but… are most managers ready for the challenge this proposes?
Going international is not an easy task, and certainly not one achieved short term. Most definitely it can be done and if you make it right, you can hit it big time. That said, there is a very important key aspect to consider when extending your brand (& business) abroad: culture.
I enjoy the definition Geographic.com has on culture: “The accumulated habits, attitudes, and beliefs of a group of people that define for them their general behavior and way of life; the total set of learned activities of a people.”
Interesting and commonly known. But, if it’s so known in the business world how come so many products fail when they’re pushed to another country? Well in reality there might be thousands of different reasons, but I definitely believe most of them are directly connected to a lack of understanding of the culture one is dealing with.
To get back on my title’s topic on ‘judgment’, how are culture and judgment interrelated? Well in many ways actually, but the one I will focus today is: Personal and cultural judgment can lead to a misunderstanding or false imaging of a foreign culture.
Like I said before, going abroad is not easy and managers who would lead the international project must be prepared, but informally and formally. A great think to tackle is exactly that: erase cultural judgment from your mind. We’re taught (right from day one) to judge others according to how different or how similar they are to us. Well, in the international business arena there is just no space for this; if you’re pretending to go abroad and create a consumer out of a native person you first must put yourself in their position, understand their lifestyle, the products they use, the way they use them, the language, the religion, etc… all of which are aspects of culture.
Once again, I conclude a post exalting the importance of research. However in this case a superficial research isn’t enough. If you don’t research a culture deep enough you might end up messing around with a fundamental part of they’re communal being; and when you’re new to a culture, this is exactly what you don’t want to do.
