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According To Gerry Martin Alert Driving Intercultural Gaffes

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Homework Questions 3.2 Analyzing Intercultural Gaffes A. According to Gerry Martin, Alert Driving's chief executive, it took years to realize that the foreign clients were unsatisfied because "in some cultures, like Japan, criticism is considered disrespectful." Companies typically have a rigorous due diligence process in place to ensure that products entering the marketplace will meet quality standards and will in fact provide a return on investment (ROI). Product or program development typically includes a discovery phase during which the environmental landscape is examined and a level of empathy for the customer’s needs wants and wishes is established. Then beta testing of a product typically takes place with a small customer base. It is appears that Alert Driving did not do an adequate job …show more content…

In the 1950’s global expansion was probably not something that Kamprad was thinking about while developing the companies naming conventions. There are numerous stories about companies developing products with names that translate into humorous or sometimes offensive words or phrases in other languages. Local shopkeepers for example provided their own translation for Coca-Cola early in the products life that translated into “bite the wax tadpole”. While these gaffes are entertaining they can also be quite costly and damaging to a product’s image. The risks are particularly high for IKEA, which does business in more than 40 countries. It has more than 9,000 Scandinavian terms in its catalog, which is constantly being revised and updated. IKEA has recognized the business risk involved and has instituted and program that includes native speakers of a language in a process to review product names and suggest

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