ABSTRACT
A significant body of research has indicated that failure in cross-cultural businesses, whether in relation to joint ventures, global team effectiveness, and expatriation is not due to lack of managerial technical competence but as a consequence of the dynamics of the intercultural experience. These dynamics include differences in cultural perceptions in values and practices which influence understanding, and attitudinal satisfaction associated with living in a foreign culture. This chapter will focus on some of the variations in cross-cultural business practices in order to foster a degree of intercultural competence. The first part of this chapter considers whether globalization or glocalization are appropriate marketing management strategies. A range of different approaches have been advanced in connection to assessing national differences in the organization of marketing management. Most accounts of marketing as an organizational activity highlight the importance of culture that marketers need to accommodate. The second theme of the chapter is to assess the concept of marketer acculturation in aiding our understanding of the process of doing business at home or abroad. Peñaloza and Gilly (1999) have used the phrases ‘the changer’ and ‘the changed’ to denote how marketers learn from their interactions with consumers and in doing so become the changed. The third section of the chapter deals with the complex issue of intercultural competence. The fourth section assesses cross-cultural aspects of relationship marketing. Much has been written on the topic of relationship marketing over the last 20 years, but the cross-cultural aspect of this discourse has been limited.
