Cultural Sensitivity in Business
As the world gets smaller businesses are starting to understand and appreciate the fact that cultural
sensitivity is crucial for securing long-term success.
Forget the saying "the world is getting smaller"- it has gotten smaller. Advances in transport and
communications technology combined with the development of a world economy have resulted in
people from different nations, cultures, languages and backgrounds now communicating, meeting
and doing business with one another more than ever.
There are some observers that claim this new found intimacy has lead to a greater understanding
of "the other" and as a result our cultural differences are in fact diminishing. However, in reality
the opposite is true. As we come together our cultural differences become accentuated as we
start to realize that the rest of the world is not reading from the same book. One area where this
is now being felt is in business.
Very few businesses can escape the need to at some point in time deal with foreign colleagues,
clients or customers. Business is international and if an organization wants to develop and grow it
needs to harness the potential an international stage offers. Twenty years ago British, European
and American organizations doing business abroad had very little competition due to the lack of
rival industrialized nations. Back then it was easy to do business "our way’. Today some of the
world’s largest economies include Japan, China, Mexico, Brazil, India and Korea. As a result
there has been a small shift from "our way" to "let’s try and understand your way’. Why? Because
western organizations are feeling the impact a lack of cultural sensitivity can and does have upon
business performance.
Many organizations are now investing heavily in providing staff with language lessons in order to
be able to crack foreign markets as well as providing cultural sensitivity training to address issues
such as etiquette, protocol, communication styles and negotiation approaches. In a competitive
world such businesses appreciate that greater cultural sensitivity will assist them in forging longer
and more prosperous relationships. Yet progress is slow. Unfortunately a subconscious sense of
cultural superiority still seems to reign; one that assumes the rest of the world does business like
us and if they don’t then they should.
The world’s inhabitants however come from many faiths, cultures, world views and experiences
which makes such an assumption futile. We are all different and as a result doing business
across borders (whether political, religious, cultural or linguistic) requires cultural sensitivity,
meaning a sense of empathy, flexibility and creativity informed by cultural knowledge. As with
most things in life, business has learnt the hard way.
To illustrate how these lessons have and are still being learnt we will look at some examples
where a lack of cultural sensitivity has let a company, individual or product down. For the sake of
brevity these have been summed up in two simple categories: culture and language.
Culture
Culture comes in many shapes and sizes. It includes areas such as politics, history, faith,
mentality, behavior and lifestyle. The following examples demonstrate how a lack of cultural
sensitivity led to failure.
-- When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different
shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant
Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was
left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and
heal the diplomatic wounds. It cost them millions.
-- The fast food giant McDonald’s spent thousands on a new TV ad to target the Chinese
consumer. The ad showed a Chinese man kneeling before a McDonald’s vendor and begging
him to accept his expired discount coupon. The ad was pulled due to a lack of cultural sensitivity
on McDonald’s behalf. The ad caused uproar over the fact that begging is considered a shameful
act in Chinese culture.
-- A nice example of how pictures don’t translate well across cultures is the time staff at the
African port of Stevadores saw the "internationally recognized" symbol for "fragile" (i.e. broken
wine glass) and presumed it was a box of broken glass. Rather than waste space they threw all
the boxes into the sea.
-- When the US firm Gerber started selling baby food in Africa they used the same packaging as
in the US, i.e. with a picture of a baby on the label. Sales flopped and they soon realized that in
Africa companies typically place pictures of contents on their labels.
-- Pepsodent tried to sell its toothpaste in South East Asia by emphasizing that it "whitens your
teeth." They found out that the local natives chew betel nuts to blacken their teeth which they find
attractive.
-- The film "Hollywood Buddha" showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity by causing outrage
and protest on the streets of Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Burma when the designer of the film’s
poster decided to show the lead 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 East. The show was pulled of the
air after its first few episodes due to public protests and pressure from religious bodies stating the
show’s mixed sex format was against Islamic principles.
-- A golf ball manufacturing company packaged golf balls in packs of four for convenient purchase
in Japan. Unfortunately, the number 4 is equivalent to the number 13 due it sounding like the
word "death". The company had to repackage the product.
Language
The business world is littered with poor translations that have caused great embarrassment to
their perpetrators due to their lack of cultural sensitivity. The following are some of the choicest
examples.
-- IKEA once tried to sell a workbench called FARTFULL - not a hugely popular product for
obvious reasons.
-- Both Clairol and the Irish alcoholic drink Irish Mist did not properly consider the German
language when they launched their products there. Clairol's hair-curling iron "Mist Stick" and the
drink "Irish Mist" both flopped - why? 'Mist' translates in German as "manure".
-- The Japanese seem to have a particular flair for naming products. The country has given us
gems such as "homo soap", "coolpis", "Germ bread" and "Shito Mix".
-- A new facial cream with the name "Joni" was proposed for marketing in India. They changed
the name since the word translated in Hindi meant "female genitals."
-- Coors had its slogan, "Turn it loose," translated into Spanish, where it became "Suffer from
diarrhea."
All the examples cited above could easily have been avoided by conducting some basic research
in respect to checking the concept, design, shape, color, packaging, message or name in the
target culture. In the majority of cases it is simply assumed that "if it is OK for us it is OK for
them’. If businesses want to succeed internationally, cultural sensitivity must be at the heart of
everything they do; from their personal interaction and relationships with clients to the
products/services they develop.