To what extent should cultural patterns be taken into account in global B2B Sales? (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,5, University of Applied Sciences Essen, course: International Strategy & Sales Management, language: English, abstract: The globalization is still ongoing. With the development and growth of technologies, for example the broadband internet, the communication between business partners becomes easier as it already is. A salesperson, which is located in Tokyo, can easily have virtual meetings with business partners all across the world without leaving the office. In this world, where the economical as well as the cultural borders between the countries dissolve more and more, companies have to work with different national cultures around the world. Salespeople and departments must think about this if they have to take the national cultural background of the business partner into account.

After the introduction, which describes the problem and the objective, the fundamentals of the used terms will be defined. Because there are different approaches of what culture is, section 2.1 will define the term culture and how it occurs. Followed by a description of different cultural dimensions. In the next section the B2B will be distinguished from the B2C. Some important aspects of the differentiation need to be described in separate sections. After that, to get an impression of cultural differences, countries will be investigated and compared in relation to their national culture and with a focus on the business behaviour. Finally, the importance of culture in the sales business will be shown, followed by a conclusion and outlook. Because of the big amount of various aspects in the sales business and the limited frame of this work, the importance can only be shown for some particular situations.