Culture Briefing for a U.S.- based Company Selling Bicycles
Assume you are a manager in a company that sells bicycles. Your company started in the United States, but it has also been a big player in the European market for a long time. Now, it is going to be expanding into a new market on a new continent. You have been asked to head a work team to develop this new market.
You will be taking some of your U.S. employees to the country, where you will lead an operation that will include these employees, as well as new employees who are citizens of the country where you will be opening a new office. You know culture is important to successfully selling your bicycles to a new set of customers, and you have decided to educate yourself about the country where you are setting up your operation. After conducting research into the market, you have prepared a briefing to enable your U.S. sales team to understand how to operate successfully in this new market.
The briefing will also help your American employees understand how to work effectively with the employees who are citizens of that country.
Please select one country in Asia, Africa, or South America. This will be your new target market. Then develop a culture briefing on the country you select.
Discuss what is happening in this industry or organization that makes this a good time to consider expanding internationally? Are there risks to remaining domestic? Be specific.
Where do you want to see your company focus their expansion efforts? Create a cultural briefing for senior management that discusses how business is conducted in this country.
In summary, this portion of your briefing should include a discussion of the country, its workforce, and its common business practices.
Discuss, for instance, language, traditions, customs, values, and ethics, life styles and common business practices.
You should also cover-
Key Business Strategies
- strategies for promoting successful business growth
- strategies for addressing the cultural perspectives of your new customers
- strategies for addressing the cultural perspectives of your new employees (that is, citizens of that country)
Address some of the key ways that cultures vary such as power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance. Then incorporate information obtained from other scholarly sources. Keep in mind that your cultural briefing is complete only if it provides practical advice for your company's senior management team. In other words, if your briefing discusses land mass, population size, and system of government, you've missed the point of this assignment. Not only is such a cultural briefing lacking information about culture, but it is short on practical information as well.
Approach this paper as you would a report to be presented to a senior management team within your organization. That means it should address these points in a clear, concise, and direct manner without any linguistic "fluff." I am looking for practical advice to the team. Remember, though, that it must also be specific enough to demonstrate how much you have learned about these topics.
The body of the paper should be at least 8 pages. At this point in the semester you should have mastered APA formatting and writing a proper abstract.