Turning Cultural Differences into Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Urasto, Liisa (2019)
Metropolia Ammattikorkeakoulu
2019
All rights reserved
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201902122259
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201902122259
Tiivistelmä
As we approach world that is getting more and more smaller, compact and the mentality is almost “one culture fits all”. People are working in increasingly amount in more international environment, in work or personal life. Trying to avoid any sort of culture shock, education is needed helping to adapt to new circumstances and to learn how to turn the differences into Sustainable Competitive Advantage in business. Quite often one spends time to strengthen the weaknesses instead of making what is working to work even more better in trade between different cultures.
One of the objectives of this research is defining what culture is and to study the theories of marketing and culture and how combining the knowledge of both, the desired goal will be achieved. The main purpose of this study was to find out if the assumption that culture is not been taken enough into consideration when marketing especially food products in trade between Finland and Japan. The aim was to do research on Japanese visitors about the source of their information and the main reason for their visit in order to find out if the right kind of channel is used for marketing and are the marketed products appealing enough or are the products sold something that the seller thinks the customers want without doing any proper research about the needs and wants.
Both qualitative and quantitative research was made to get info from the companies that have trade in Japan about where, what and how they advertise and if they had any issues in trade, and if it is because of cultural differences. From the consumers point of view where they get the information and is the product they wanted. In addition, the relevant literature about the theories were reviewed in order to analyzing the results in a proper business method way.
Finally, the author summarizes the findings, offers recommendations for further research since the result was the opposite that was the original assumption that culture has not been taken into consideration in marketing when it comes to food and beverages exported from Finland into Japan.
One of the objectives of this research is defining what culture is and to study the theories of marketing and culture and how combining the knowledge of both, the desired goal will be achieved. The main purpose of this study was to find out if the assumption that culture is not been taken enough into consideration when marketing especially food products in trade between Finland and Japan. The aim was to do research on Japanese visitors about the source of their information and the main reason for their visit in order to find out if the right kind of channel is used for marketing and are the marketed products appealing enough or are the products sold something that the seller thinks the customers want without doing any proper research about the needs and wants.
Both qualitative and quantitative research was made to get info from the companies that have trade in Japan about where, what and how they advertise and if they had any issues in trade, and if it is because of cultural differences. From the consumers point of view where they get the information and is the product they wanted. In addition, the relevant literature about the theories were reviewed in order to analyzing the results in a proper business method way.
Finally, the author summarizes the findings, offers recommendations for further research since the result was the opposite that was the original assumption that culture has not been taken into consideration in marketing when it comes to food and beverages exported from Finland into Japan.