One size certainly doesn’t fit all! Everyone has probably found himself in a situation of misunderstanding because of difference in cultures. These things happen all the time while interacting with people from different cultures and if you don’t take them in account, you can not fully understand what is said and done. Not to mention to sell something.

When serving online customers and trying to reach new markets, these variables become very important. Language, more than anything else is the heart of culture.* Assumptions about culture affect the way people communicate with each other. The culture dimension encompasses different ways in which people think, act or behave, including the interactions toward themselves, with their families and with other people. Different cultures have different values towards religion, society, politics and family, as well as towards allocation of time and all that reflects in their conversation styles. All these differences have to be noticed and used to enhance the communication with online customers.

How can your company notice those cultural differences?

There are basically two ways to do that. The first is from second-hand sources, by doing research on the countries you do business with. And the second one is to gain insights into them by experience – from conversations with people or visiting the country. To get the most of these efforts, the first-hand experience counts the most.

The research, besides basic information and statistics you can get, should also focus on the online-shopping preferences and characteristics of the nation. For example, to take into account the risk online visitors face when buying online, finding out which nations have greater financial risk (credit card fraud) opposed to product risk and similar. That can be done partly by a research on the safety of credit card payment in the countries you do business and find out which risks do they face. The length of Internet usage, the Internet connection availability and the technology are also very important things to take in account to interact properly to website visitors from a certain country.

The first-hand experience is probably wise to be focused more on the linguistic preferences, which often give clues about the behavior, manners and thinking of that particular culture. All of this should result in using a specific language to reflect what is learned. But language is much more than words and every language has linguistic preferences.

For example, the English use understatement and modesty; they are sometimes vague to avoid any confrontation and extremely polite. Spaniards and Italians on the other hand like to be flowery with their language, preferring eloquence and expressiveness over exactness. Germans are very logical in manner and words. Asians, including Japanese and Chinese, consider harmony an important virtue and will avoid confrontation at all costs. For that reason, they will often say yes to many things with the understanding of “Yes, I hear you” or “Yes, I understand”, and not necessarily “Yes, I agree.”

Much more things can be said on this subject. But you cannot step into the same river twice for it is always moving. And that is why, things that are moving so fast should be closely followed and updated practices should be used.

*Robert L. Stevenson, Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century




By: Dijana Dimitrovska