Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

Sometime back, I attended a lecture on Marketing and the lecturer mentioned a really interesting situation on cross cultural advertising. The story goes like this:

An outdoor advertising campaign on laundry detergent was launched in some Middle Eastern country because the company wished to increase the sales of the detergent in that area. The advertisement came in three parts, all placed side by side outside a building.

On the left, the giant poster showed a dirty piece of clothing. In the centre, another poster showed the same dirty piece of clothing was dipped into a pail of water with the company’s laundry detergent. On the right, the other poster showed a clean piece of clothing after taking out from the pail. The ad was designed such that it was very simple and easy to understand.

However after a month, the sales of the company dropped even further. Feeling puzzled, the advertising department went to survey the public why they did not choose to buy their detergent. After getting the public' s feedback, the company realized that the people of that country read the posters from right to left instead. Hence, they interpret the detergent as "making their clothes dirty" instead of "making their clothes cleaner". After changing the posters the other way round, the sales of the detergent increases.

Although this example sounds a bit extreme, it still informed us about the importance of cultural awareness due to the differences in cultural behaviour. We might assume that basic communication and norms, like the direction of reading text, should be same throughout the world. However, some cultural contexts are just different from what we think.

Hence, understanding intercultural behaviour is relatively important if you were to manage business in other countries. Even giving personal gifts might be seen as a bribe in certain countries but not in others. Therefore, we have to overcome prejudice, stereotyping and ethnocentrism so that we can become better intercultural communicators!

Business Correspondence Critique

Before I begin my actual post, Happy Valentine's Day to all!!

Previously, I had a really bad experience in one of the Public Libraries, so I filed a complaint email to the Management Board. After a week or two, I received an email reply from the Manager of the Library (names of the Library and the Manager have been changed to safeguard their privacy).

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Dear YuanYuan

Thank you for your email of 25 Nov 08.

First and foremost, please accept our sincere apologies for the discomfort you felt during your visits to our library. It is definitely our aim to ensure that the library remains as a place where you can enjoy some quality time with us amidst a pleasant and comfortable ambience.

The issue of noise in the Library is a concern that we share with you. We seek your understanding that with thousands of visitors daily increasing, especially during the period of the Library's recent reopening, close to ten thousands of visitors had visited the XX Public Library daily, our staff face a daunting and difficult task trying to maintain calm and quiet in the libraries. The measures we have implemented include posters on silence in the library as well as our staff make regular rounds in the library to advise noisy, loud and inconsiderate customers to lower their voices and to stop activities that cause disturbance to others. User education sessions are conducted for new members, especially children and students, to educate them on proper manners and library etiquette. In addition, announcements are made at regular intervals to advise customers to refrain from creating noise or inconveniencing others.

We will continue to stress and remind our staff to be vigilant and step up patrolling /monitoring of activities, especially on the weekends so as to maintain a conducive environment for all our library customers.

Once again, thank you for your valuable feedback and we look forward to your continued support of our library services.

Regards,

ZZ

for Manager

XX Public Library
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Basically, I feel that this email has fulfilled some of the 7Cs.

First of all, the element of 'Courtesy' was present in the letter. It showed concern for the reader and demonstrated a clear understanding of the problem that I faced (which was the library being too noisy). The tone was appropriate and the Manager showed sincere apologies at the beginning of the email, and her gratitude towards the end.

I think the email was pretty coherent and concise in explaining the measures that the Library had taken to address the issue. However, I believe that both can be improved further. The email was fairly concrete as the measures mentioned in the email were already in placed. The problems, current measures and future actions were stated clearly in this email. Thus, the email is complete as adequate information was provided and it answered my concerns.

However, the biggest problem that I see in this email was 'Correctness' and 'Clarity'. These problems are particularly prominent in the third paragraph of the email, where the Manager was trying to describe the concern and current actions taken towards reducing the noise level in the library. The grammar and sentence structures can be improved further so that there is more clarity and fluency. For example, the sentence in orange could be rewrite as "With the increasing number of visitors visiting the library, we would like to seek your understanding especially during the period of our recent opening. As such, our staff was also faced with a daunting and difficult task to maintain calmness and quietness in the library".

After reading the email, how do you think it should be improved?