Merken exportation project.

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By this frame, a Chinese corporation would analyze very carefully the Chilean market. The decisions would be taken by the highest authorities, and minimizing risk at every stage. A joint venture would be a safe bet for them, and they would also respect it a lot. In case of any bad scenario, Chinese people wouldn’t do much to change their status, they would just rather stay in the same situation and not waste resources in that.

Chinese people are a high context society, so the relationship formed when bringing a new product is crucial for the business. But they are way more decisive that other cultures, this due to their “black” or “white” philosophy. So in conclusion they would do it very carefully, gathering a lot of information and taking decision with a lot of strength.

Same, but by a North American Corp

The process of a North American company would be different from the Chinese; this is due to the different way of doing business. For Americans, the utilitarian way of doing things is the best, they always measure the costs and benefits of what they are doing. They are also way more risk lovers. Americans are a low context culture, so they will be more interested in going directly to the point when doing business and not waste time building partnerships. They are also very adaptive to different environments, so if any situation arises, they would feel comfortable by adapting and making new decisions. And this also implies that they would spend a lot of resources in this. They are also not so decisive when making a decision, so the process of using resources to change their environment is crucial and they will use that to introduce its product to Chile, also they would gather a lot of information to make the best decision, and after all this, they would take it but not before. So basically they would take more time to introduce the product, but once they do it, they would be more flexible when adapting to the new environment, and would not be shy to spend a lot of money in it.

Take your country of origin, and contrast findings in this case, for the same marketing situations. Contrast cultural differences in light of the same concept discussed in the case

My country of origin is Chile.

For the first marketing situation, Chile is in the middle of both Canadian and Chinese, but with a tendency for the Canadian behavior, this means that even though we would continue with the failing product at first, when some time passes the Chilean company would not continue with the product. This is because Chileans are in some way sensitive to saving-face concerns, but only at a certain point, because we are also very cost-benefit analysts. So in the long run we would discontinue the product.

For the second marketing situation. Chileans are risk averse, which means we are more similar to the Chinese culture in that way, this means that probably we would maintain the relationship with the other company in a joint venture, also because of our high dependency to international markets.

For the third situation, throughout the history of Chile there has always been a tendency for authoritarian decision styles, this means that our structures tend to be very hierarchical, and the decisions are always taken by high management. But this has been changing in the last decades, since Chile is a country very open to the international world and it is beginning to globalize its costumes. So more “North American” ways of decision style are being adapted in the Chilean companies, so it is expected that in the long run we become a more participative management just like Canada.

For situation four, unfortunately Chile has been a culture that wouldn’t take remedial actions when a faulty product was discovered, they would rather be more similar to the North American style and would take the decision with the less cost for the company, but with a higher negative impact for society, this aspect has been very controvert in the last decades with all the problems that some companies have had, such as La Polar, and the toilet paper companies. Since all the manifestations that the Chilean people have done, it is expected that there is going to be more supervision by the government, and this should change in the long term.

Conclusion

In conclusion this study has shown us the differences between cultures when making business decisions, this has also shown that there is a tendency to a more globalized way of doing things since Hong Kong demonstrated to be very similar to western companies. So it is very certain that ethnic cultures do matter in decision making, and cultures does make a difference in problem identification and in the objectives motivating choice. There are also very different approaches when dealing with uncertainty and the risk taking procedures are different between countries, but whenever they internationalize, they get more similar. So in the marketing world we are living right now, with such intensive communications, standardizations and similar technologies, cultural differences are tending to diminish more and more, so globalization is a thing that is happening whether we want it or not. There are certain aspects that tend to equalize faster than others, but this is completely individual for each culture, and there is no certainty on the limits of similarity that globalization may reach. So this type of studies is very helpful to understand where are we standing right now, and more studies should be done overtime to get to know all the implications that globalization has.