Social and Cultural

Forget the saying "the world is becoming less" - it has gotten smaller. Advances in transportation and communication technology in combination with the development of world economy resulted in people from different nations, cultures, languages ​​and backgrounds now communicating, meeting and doing business with each other more than ever.

There are some observers argue that this new found intimacy has lead to a better understanding of the 'other' and as a result of our cultural differences are in fact diminishing. However, in reality the opposite is true. As we come together our cultural differences become more pronounced as we begin to realize that the rest of the world does not read the same books. One area where it is now felt in the business.

Very few businesses can escape the need to at some point in time to deal with foreign colleagues, clients or customers. Business is international, and if the organization wants to grow it needs to exploit the potential of the international stage bid. Twenty years ago, British, European and American organizations operating abroad is very little competition due to lack of rival industrialized nations. Then it is easy to do business "our way". Today some of the world's largest economies are Japan, China, Mexico, Brazil, India and Korea. As a result there has been little progress since "our way" up "and try to understand his way." Why? Because the Western organizations feel the impact of the lack of cultural sensitivity and can not have the business.

Many organizations today have invested heavily in providing staff with language in order to crack foreign markets, as well as providing cultural sensitivity training to address issues such as etiquette, protocol, communication styles and approaches to negotiations. In the competitive world of such companies appreciate that greater cultural sensitivity will help in creating more and more prosperous relationship. However, progress is slow. Unfortunately, the subconscious sense of cultural superiority still seems to reign, who took over the rest of the world does business like us, and if they do not then you should

of the world's inhabitants however come from many faiths, cultures, worldviews and experiences which makes this assumption in vain. We are all different and as a result of business across borders (whether political, religious, cultural or linguistic) requires cultural sensitivity, which means feeling empathy, flexibility and creativity, informed by cultural knowledge. As with most things in life, business has learned the hard way.

To illustrate how these lessons are still being taught, we will look at some examples where the lack of cultural sensitivity is a company, individual or product down. For brevity, these are summarized in two simple categories. Culture and language

Culture

Culture comes in many shapes and sizes. This includes areas such as politics, history, religion, mentality, behavior and ways života.Sljedeći examples show how the lack of cultural sensitivity led to failure.

* When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them different shades of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was immediately banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system to try to heal diplomatic wounds. It cost them millions.

* Fast food giant McDonald's spent thousands on a new TV ad aimed at Chinese consumers. This ad is shown kneeling in front of McDonald's Chinese vendor and begging him to accept his expired discount coupon. This ad was pulled because of the lack of cultural sensitivity on McDonald ime.Oglas caused uproar on the fact that begging is considered shameful act in Chinese culture.

* a nice example of how the picture does not translate well across cultures is a time of staff at the African port Stevadores saw the "internationally recognized" symbol for "fragile" (ie broken wine glass), and assumed that jeokvir broken glass. Rather than waste space thrown all the boxes into the sea.

* When the U.S. firm Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the United States, or with a picture of the child on the label. Sell ​​flopped and they soon realized that in Africa companies typically place the image content on labels.

* Pepsodent tried to sell its toothpaste in Southeast Asia, emphasizing that the "white teeth." They discovered that the local natives chew betel nuts to blacken their teeth which they find attractive.

* film "Hollywood Buddha" has shown a complete lack of cultural sensitivity that causes outrage and protests on the streets of Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Burma when the designer of movie posters decided to show the actor sitting on the Buddha's head, an act of clear degradation against something holy.

* the concept of Big Brother was somehow taken to the Middle istoku.Show pulled into the air after the first few episodes, because of public protests and pressure from religious bodies stating the show's format is a mixed sex against Islamic principles.

* manufacturing company packaged golf balls golf balls in packs of four for convenient purchase in Japan. Unfortunately, the number 4 is equivalent to the number 13, because it sounds like the word "death." Company to repackage the product.

language

the business world is full of bad translations that have caused great embarrassment to their perpetrators due to the lack of cultural osjetljivosti.Ovo some of the choicest examples.

* IKEA once tried to sell the desk called FARTFULL -. Hugely popular product is not for obvious reasons

* I Clairol and the Irish alcoholic drink Irish Mist is not properly take into account the German language when they launched their products there. Clairol hair-curling iron "Mist Stick Duo" and drink "Irish Mist" and flopped - why? 'Fog' translates in German as "manure ".

* Japanese seem to have a particular flair for naming proizvoda.Zemlja gave us gems such as "homo soap", "coolpis", "germ bread" and "Shito Mix ".

* new facial cream with the name "Joni" was proposed for marketing in India. They changed the name because the word translated in Hindi means "female genitalia ."

* Coors had a slogan, "Turn it loose," translated into Spanish, where it became "suffer from diarrhea ."

All the above examples could easily avoid conducting some basic research in relation to the verification of the concept, design, shape, color, packaging, message or name in the target culture. In most cases it is simply assumed that 'if it's okay for us it's okay for them. "If companies want to succeed internationally, cultural sensitivity must be in the middle of all that work, from his personal interactions and relationships with customers on products / services that are developing