Challenges in Doing Business Across The Border

The difference of cultures around the world have created challenges in doing business across the border. Culture is the main issue that bothers the retailer plans to expand their business beyond domestic markets. Communication is a human nature. In each culture, there are different communication called “High and Low context” High context communication has more spoken words and less coded information in the communication process.

In the communication process with people from a high context culture, they expect the receiver to know what they are talking about. Low context communication is the opposite with less communication; the information that the people are trying to deliver is as complete as possible. In a high context culture, people have deep relationships. This means that working with people from the high context culture is based on relationships, where people tend to group and work together. Before going abroad, owners need to learn how culture affects their business operations in the international context. Which includes the in-depth knowledge in the fields of culture, and how they influence the style of business, such as customer services, customer buying behavior, and anticipation of challenges they will face abroad. The major obstacle will be the culture among countries that affect consumer preferences, spending patterns and buying habits (Lovelock & Wirtz, 2007).

The process of globalization has caused rapid changes in people's thoughts and behaviors and how they do business. Therefore, international retailers need to understand consumer behavior in different circumstances and marketing. What is the behavior of overseas customers? In the consumer decision-making style is an important factor to consider. But it is also proved that the national culture is a huge impact on attitudes and values in a person, and these have an important influence on the consumers’ decision-making style. Consumers in the high context culture are called group and consumers from the low context culture are called personnel. The social patterns of the two groups of people that will affect the behavior of them, and the effects of the pattern on a person's self-identity, level of their reactions on impacts, additionally the ought to hold to their inside conviction to do the right activities within the bunches of individuals (Kacen & Lee, 2002).

People in collectivist cultures are always changing their behavior based on what they think is appropriate for a particular situation. These people generally said more mature in the process of decision making of them. Because when they have a decision, they put the feeling and do it without the influence of personal attitudes and beliefs (Triandis, 1995). It also has been found in research on the relationship between attitudes, behaviors, attitudes, and intentions to cut down on collectivist versus individualist culture. So culture in individual people didn't pay much attention to the negative effects that may be caused by the behavior of the impulsive purchase. And they need to have positive thoughts affect your actions and offer positive thoughts in their goals and feel.

On the other hand, people who come from the collectivist cultures will focus on negative outcomes from their particular habits and how their actions affect the group to which they are attached to, this will affect people in collectivist cultures, as they will think twice before making any impulsive. Some study claim that religion is part things that have an impact on the behavior of consumers. The importance of the value system of religion has been recognized in sociology and psychology. But it has not been fully committed to consumer research. Studies in marketing literature suggest that religion is an important element of the culture. On the behavior and purchasing decisions. This article is an analysis of the influence of religion on consumer choice and proposal, adhering to belief Religion, especially affecting the shopping. Buying a television at the base. The study of shopping behavior of Hindus, Muslims and contrasting the Catholic found under the religion should be included in the research. Cross culture in the future. And there is much potential for research in expanding the influence of religious affiliation in consumers (Essoo & Dibb, 2010).

There are many factors that create obstacles for retailers in international markets. Many retailers are expanding their business overseas and therefore it is very important to have an in-depth understanding of the assessment and the results of the customer service quality, as well as how the relationship with customers in different markets around the world. Customers in low context cultures and high context cultures differ greatly in the way that they expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the services they receive (Ozdemir & Hewett, 2010).

A research was carried out in China, a low context culture country, on six stores of a UK multinational seller. The interview implicated a cross-section of 117 local employees, selected from many sections, and from every level of the firm. This includes checkout staff, customer assistants, department supervisors and managers, and key expatriate staff. During the process of the interview. The staff was asked to share the experience of interacting with their customers. Different ways of how they persuade their target customers to make purchasing the item and method. They deal with problems when they are faced with difficult clients and hard. The research focuses more on how employees’ reactions and their point of view (Ozdemir & Hewett 2010) in China retail market is saturated with intense competition between all types of stores. State-owned, private and foreign merchants and seller across the nation found that competition in a price that is much more difficult.

The only sustainable advantage these companies can work on is to focus on customer service is the key factor that determines the success of a company. Customers in high context cultures often do not show their discontent and they will always try to support the social unity by avoiding the problem can be seen in China and Japan. On the contrary, when bad customer service in the country in which the customer would have a low context culture is more motivation to show their anger, and they will ask for compensation for a bad quality service delivered to them. A study conducted by researchers at the results collected across cultures have shown a difference in Western and Eastern express their emotions. It also found that there is violence, and the frequency of positive emotions, strong in the Low Countries, cultural context, refers to the Western countries. Compared to countries in the context of culture refers to countries in East Asia.

There are three different reasons is that different people in their culture norms. In western cultures, people are encouraged to experience and a positive feeling. And they will take things in a positive manner (Kitayama, Markus, & Kurokawa, 2000). Contrarily, Asian cultures tend to have more negative feelings compared to Western countries (Diener & Suh, 1999). The second reason is that a group of Western and Asian people who differ in their requirements for positive self- In support of this, Marta Heine and Lehman Kitayama (1999) point out that Japan is more important people of the Western engkwa and force more of self-criticism may cause decreased levels of the good in people. Third, a group of people with different perception in the future. A comparison is made by the elephant and Asakawa Sanna (2001) optimism and pessimism. The research was conducted to American, Europe and Japan to make predictions of the event in the life of the people. He is American, Europe shows the difference in the predictions they do when compared to others, but people. In Japan believe they are different from others. In order to be incident positive show prejudice. Pessimistic (Scollon Christy, Diener, Oishi, and 2004).

Some people think that is not just culture that can impact on customer services but experience also have an impact on that. One study found that 75%, of companies said that their purpose is to improve the customer experience (Morgan, 2017). Not only can that experience build a good relationship between seller and customer. Research has found a strong relationship between customer experience and loyalty. Businesses that get it right are more likely to retain customers, and customers who recommend a product or service to a friend, according to researcher Forrester who has a strong relationship between a customer's good experience and their willingness to buy from the company again. In the survey, it also found that customer experience is also directly linked to viral marketing.

There are many challengers to pass and a lot of variables to consider for people who want to be retailers abroad. First of all, Retailers need to understand how people in their target country need. The retailers must know what kind of products they are going to sell, who are their customers and learn not only how different between their culture but also how culture effects consumer in daily life especially in deep details such as payment method and how to buy products. For examples, the survey that made by Pitney Bowes from a global technology company found that while people from most west countries prefer apparel and footwear in person while Chinese consumers prefer to buy these items online. Even in the same country but different city, people might prefer different thing like in Thailand.

Most Consumers in big cities like Chiang Mail and Bangkok prefer to pay by credit or debit card while people in country side prefer to pay by money. If retailers study and understand about these information. It will help market planning how to provide and put the right things to the right target of consumer. To provide the right things and serve the needs to customers, the retailers might need to change the environment of service to impress their customers because people from high and low context always expect different kind of service. Training the employee to impress customer is the most important and easiest thing in changing environment process because employee is the group of people who work with your consumers.

The customers in beauty store from different country is good example for this. In Korea, Customers will always ask some advising from shop keepers so the shop keepers must be inform all things about cosmetic and they were trained to follow customers and always ask if they need some help or any information. Thailand on the other hand, the customers do not like when shop keepers following them. They would like to make their own decision and only come to your shop keeper only when they need help. Not only in beauty shop but training employee to face customers from different culture and background can be adapted to all kind of abroad business.Some people think that knowing information about high and low context culture in target country is not important because they think culture does not effects to human behavior that much and all humans need the same thing. Those people are right that human are all the same if they only look through it but people need different thing in deep detail. The details that might be disregard can have an effect to customer’s emotion and feeling.

The consumers will be impressed or not is up to these details.Culture is an important thing to understand each consumer’s lifestyle which are different depend on countries that they live in. Knowing and understanding about this information give the benefits to adapt and use in marketing plans for different culture. This plan also help finding the appropriate way to sell product or service which is match with consumer’s current need. These also help international owners to succeed their goal and survive in highly competitive markets system. To understand clearly about the meaning of international business, learning about different culture is required in this. The owner will only success their goal easier only when they understand about their target country’s culture.

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