Week 9 - Shannon Trinh

It is extremely important to get to know a country’s culture before making branding/marketing/product decisions. It is also important to drop any assumptions that your own culture is superior, better done, or the is default and universal belief system. People with alternate worldviews or ideologies will respond to different kinds of methods of branding, and will only respond to products that add unique value to their lives. From the reading, I think that a country’s priority in relationships should be extensively researched and experienced to avoid miscommunication or any unpleasant surprises when engaging in business: “Building relationships in Vietnam takes time: lots of coffee meetings can be compressed into several beer drinking sessions. These (usually inebriating) sessions can be compressed into a karaoke lounge stop. Overall, people are generally quite accessible in Vietnam, and generally are willing to extend their networks and knowledge” (7). Networking in America is extremely different, as it is a lot more formal and lacks a personal aspect to initial meetings. Drinking in America is considered to be a social activity rather than a professional engagement, and if anything, becoming intoxicated in front of your professional peers is highly frowned upon. It is ironic how in Vietnam, you must be open to close relationships in order to get work done, but you also have to be wary of locals who tend to be scammers: “Newly arrived foreigners sometimes complain about locals not being straightforward or even lying. Locals might consider this “bending the truth,” as (to them) while lies are more often than not perfectly acceptable” (2). There are definitely business people in the U.S. who are sneaky and “backstabbing” in nature, but there seems to be no way in Vietnam to hold individuals accountable – it has been permanently woven in to their culture.

 We can take these ideas and mold them into our business approach for our wellness mobile application. I’ve always held onto the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Making an effort to network with important and big named businesses and to establish a give and take relationship with them will help boost the publicity and validity of the application. Unlike the culture in Vietnam, the U.S. culture tends to frown upon frauds and encourages holding individuals accountable for their negative actions. That is what our application will do when conducting thorough background checks and maintaining visibility and transparency to the public. In addition, our rating feature will also allow users to hold local businesses accountable for their services and their employees. This article will also inspire a “report” button, to report any scams, inappropriate behavior, or immoral business practices any organization commits. Through these actions, we hope to achieve “credibility, authenticity, and reputation.”

Question: How do cultural differences affect collaboration or intersection of businesses or companies?

Works Cited:

Excerpt from Andrew Roman’s Manuscript