Language Games

A brand of water called 'Schweppes Toilet Water', a sauce called 'arse', a drink called 'lesbian', etc.
Were the marketers drunk while searching for a brand name?
No, these are the results of poor research & thereby bad translations while introducing a product abroad. Although these mistakes may be received as funny, they have caused severe financial consequences. Complete marketing campaigns have been thrown over because of poor translations, resulting in thousands of dollars loss.
This demonstrates the increasing need for better translation services with cultural awareness in this globalizing world.

kwintessential is a service that besides demonstrating these problems also offers solutions for avoiding them.

Simon Buysse

Yes + Yes = No?

Businessmen shouldn't be too surprised when an arrangement with a foreigner is undone for no apparent reason.
Although such actions may be considered deceptive, many cultures are keen on being indirect. The Japanese for instance will agree with you in front a group and negotiate afterwards rather than disagreeing & thereby risking to harm the group harmony.
Does this mean that we can't trust a word the Japanese tell us? Not necessarily.
This indirectness can be percolated by observing non-verbal communication such as hand gestures and eye contact. After a bit of training you will perceive these gestures as if you were reading an open book.

Read the whole article here

Simon Buysse

Adjustment failures

Underestimating the business related effects of cross-cultural differences can be catastrophic and can set you back a few million dollars.
A model example of this is what happened to FedEx a while ago.
Because of the saturated domestic market they decided to expand their horizons and established many subsidiaries all over the world.
The centralized delivery system turned out to be inappropriate outside the USA and furthermore they failed to adapt to several cultural characteristics such as the preference of the Spaniards to work late. After a while FedEx had to close down over 100 European establishments with $ 1.2 billion in losses!

U can read more examples here

Simon Buysse

Cross-cultural business blunders

Did you know that 'Schweppes tonic water' means 'Schweppes Toilet water' in Italy or that the ad "Come Alive With Pepsi" is translated into Chinese as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead."? Neither did the advertisers of Schweppes and Pepsi.
It is clear that when neglecting cross-cultural issues in areas as management, advertising or PR, these people may have to face damaging consequences. Definitely in these areas, where success of the products lays in the hands of the consumers acceptance. Luckily, as globalization is becoming more and more important, businesses pay more attention to these differences. Nowadays, there is already a great deal of information available to prevent these major blunders from happening.

Anyway, if you are feeling down and need a good laugh, the link below, can certainly cheer you up. It gives you quite some blunder examples of companies who weren't aware of the cultural differences.

'blunders'

Febe De Lille

Success of Trade Agreements

Globalization has made trade agreements a worldwide phenomenon. The success of those trade agreements depends among other things on the lack of differences in ethical attitudes between the participating countries. In this paper, the success of the NAFTA (= North-American Free Trade Agreement) was examined. Hofstede's Cultural Framework was used to compare Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. In addition to Hofstede's Framework, other cultural characteristics were used to give us a better view on the ethical behaviour of managers in those countries. The paper shows us that trade agreements can be successfull if the participating countries share their ethical attitudes.

Peter Depypere

BUSINESS ETHICS IN THE NAFTA COUNTRIES: A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do"

We clearly can't deny the fact that there is a huge amount of cross-cultural differences in ethics. But should we give ourself the task to change the ethics in other, less developed countries? Can we have the arrogance to oblige people in India, who are coping with bribery, slavery, etc, to change their ethics because in our world saving minds, they are 'bad'. According to the proverb "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", we can't oblige people to change their ethics. Nevertheless, proverbs will not save the world.

Peter Depypere


Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home

Will the 5 dimensions solve the problem?

Ever heard of the 5 cultural dimensions?
These dimensions, developed by Hofstede, focus on national culture. As the internationalization is increasing, more and more managers need to work together with people from different cultures. It's quite possible that those culture differences give rise to misunderstandings.
So after comparing the pros and cons, the international business people have intensively accepted this theory to avoid these misunderstandings. These 5 dimensions show what all cultures have in common, especially in the business sector.

However, do these dimensions solve the problem? Can they relate the cultural differences to different ethical attitudes? To find out you need to click on "read the paper". The result, after intensive reading, will definitely surprise you!

Febe De Lille

read the paper

Whoops!

I used to think that an enterprise as big as Honda would take the time to do some though going research on cross cultural marketing. But too bad, when Honda launched the new Honda Fitta, they had forgotten to check what Fitta means. So after a while they discovered Fitta was an old Finish word for female genital, this horrible mistake meant to Honda that they had to rename the car and restart the whole marketing campaign. I have no idea who paid this, but this example might be one of the best proofs why enterprises have to bear cross cultural differences in mind.

Géraldine

Read some other stupid mistakes.

Cross-cultural differences in ethical attitudes: Reality or theory?

There may be a theory about cross-cultural differences in ethical attitudes, but are there really differences throughout the world? In this research, researchers tried to identify significant differences in business ethics between students from China and the USA. The students were asked to agree/disagree with eight statements concerning business ethics. Seven statements showed significant differences between the Chinese and American students. As this research shows, we can conclude that there may be indeed differences in business ethics throughout the world. Nevertheless, we must be careful with this conclusion as we can't generalise this comparison.

For the details and numbers of the research, consult the research paper


Peter Depypere

What do cross-cultural differences mean?

When you hear ‘cross-cultural differences’, you kind of know what they're talking about. But do you really?
To solve the issue of cultural differences we need to go back to the original definition.
Culture is defined as a pattern of thinking and potential acting. Learning how to think and act is thought by the people around you, and personal life experiences. Your culture makes you who you are and how you think. People of the same country even have cultural differences.
We know that cross-cultural differences play a significant role in business relations where it is all about reading the other person.
But it is not only in business relations that people bump into these problems. The Australian Flexible Learning Frameworks shows that cultural differences also influence the effectiveness of learning. When teachers look over cultural differences in front of students with different cultures, then these might question the teachers knowledge or feel left out.
To prevent this, they have written an article to tell more about the different aspects, consequences and preventions, get the reader motivated and interested to reduce the secrets of cultural differences. By reading this article, you can prevent quite some misunderstandings! Do you want to contribute? Read the article, just by clicking on the following link.


Febe De Lille

Read the article here

Cross-Cultural training

Cross-Cultural training, a new popular term. Research on Google after those 3 words gives us 4.450.000 hits, but what does cross-cultural training means?

After reading some pages on the internet found by Google, teamwork between people with a different culture doesn’t seem that easy. But no worry, after a training given by for example, Kwintessential, the strange Chinese can become your soul mate. Of course leaders of the firm don’t have to feel jealous because they can come along with their employees and in the mean time also get coached.

On the whole I start to think that this kind of training is more profitable for Kwintessential than for the firm who is asking for it.

Géraldine

The Business Culture guide

While Germans are always in time and hating people that are too late, Russians hate them too but are often too late themselves. Another remarkable difference, South-Africans love the gesture of a gift, but in China is giving a present an illegal act.

Travelling across different countries, means travelling across different cultures. So if you want to make that deal with your colleague in Singapore you better be prepared. Luckily executive planet made a list of the most important differences in style between 48 different countries, so take a quick look at the site and you will get even closer to that deal.

Géraldine