RELATIONSHIPS & CULTURE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

RELATIONSHIPS & CULTURE - Essay Example Cultural distance and differences are widely used constructs in making international business relating to expansion of foreign investments, entry mode choice, and performance of affiliates (Shenkar, 2001). Likewise, relationship marketing emphasises on customer retention and satisfaction instead of focusing dominantly on transactions and sales. It is said that an organisation needs to improve its level of competitiveness in a globalised market in order to survive the competition if not to dominate it, and marketing tactics help tremendously in achieving this endeavor. Literatures say that among these tactics is the employment of relationship marketing that aids the firm to market internationally its product or service. A firm's external operations entail an understanding of how cultural differences affect international marketing decisions. This understanding can be utilised in predicting strategic movements and responses of competitors and thus enables the firm to design effective competitive strategies. International sales negotiations are the primary focal point of this understanding (Tse, et al., 1988, p. 81). The internal conduct of multinational firms also needs knowledge of the impact of culture on marketing decisions. ... For organisations with diverse cultural backgrounds, the interpretation of cues for standard operating procedures may vary because of these cultural backgrounds, imploring the need to understand cultural differences in international marketing. Another reason as to why a good understanding of cultural differences is important in international marketing is because this knowledge of cultural influences permits the firms to adapt to such differences, enabling it to reduce the so called 'noisy communications" as well as eliminate errors in decision-making. These are said to occur likely out of lack of common understanding, which stems from lack of understanding of cultural differences (Montgomery and Weinberg, 1979 in Tse, et al., 1988, p. 81). It is already a given knowledge that in the past, especially prior to the globalised era, Western managerial culture dominated multinational firms. However, this trail has changed a long way as shown by the recent trends' increase in international trade and foreign direct investment of Asian multinational firms and North American subsidiaries that operate in Asian countries. This implies furtherance of salient understanding of cultural impact on an organisation's internal operations (Tse , et al., 1988). This emphasis on cultural differences is exemplified by the case of China's businesses, which experience isolation from contacts with international markets for many years. Thus, their marketing decision processes have relatively represented pure form of cultural influence on business behavior caused by cultural impacts. It is suggested that an Oriental business community with strong and continuous interaction with the Western businesses is what