Marketing Female Fitness Equipment in Saudi Arabia
Select a country where you consider the national culture to be significantly different to your own. Write an essay of approximately 1,500 words to analyse the key cultural differences you consider an exporter of a specific product from your own culture would need to be aware of when exporting to your chosen country for the first time.
In the modern business environment, huge technological advances in both communication and transport have contributed heavily to ever increasing globalisation. It is now commonplace to find large organisations operating as multinational companies trading in a vast number of nations around the world. Expanding a business from one country into another isn’t just a case of setting up offices and carrying out operations as usual. There can be huge cultural incongruity between nations which can have a huge impact on the way in which a business conducts both itself and its operations in order to be successful. It is essential that any business wishing to expand trade into a new country avoids ethnocentric thinking and is willing to be flexible to the culture of that nation. McDonald’s fast food chain is an excellent example of a business that has adapted and thrived in over 119 countries in 6 continents. It has achieved this by building the business around the culture rather than imposing themselves upon it. Everything from their menu’s, the décor and the price differ hugely among the different culture’s they operate within.
For any exporter (in this analysis, it is home fitness equipment), it is easier to export to some cultures rather than others. If a culture is similar to the exporters own then it will make the process significantly simpler. The challenges arise when attempting to export to a culture that is significantly different from the exporters own. When exporting from any ‘westernised’ countries such as England or America to eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates the cultural differences to be
In the modern business environment, huge technological advances in both communication and transport have contributed heavily to ever increasing globalisation. It is now commonplace to find large organisations operating as multinational companies trading in a vast number of nations around the world. Expanding a business from one country into another isn’t just a case of setting up offices and carrying out operations as usual. There can be huge cultural incongruity between nations which can have a huge impact on the way in which a business conducts both itself and its operations in order to be successful. It is essential that any business wishing to expand trade into a new country avoids ethnocentric thinking and is willing to be flexible to the culture of that nation. McDonald’s fast food chain is an excellent example of a business that has adapted and thrived in over 119 countries in 6 continents. It has achieved this by building the business around the culture rather than imposing themselves upon it. Everything from their menu’s, the décor and the price differ hugely among the different culture’s they operate within.
For any exporter (in this analysis, it is home fitness equipment), it is easier to export to some cultures rather than others. If a culture is similar to the exporters own then it will make the process significantly simpler. The challenges arise when attempting to export to a culture that is significantly different from the exporters own. When exporting from any ‘westernised’ countries such as England or America to eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates the cultural differences to be
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