In the past, doing business in Japan was a difficult, complicated, and often unsuccessful venture. In addition to different languages, social customs, and histories, the United States is a low-context culture; Japanese is high-context. In recent year, however, several U.S companies have overcome the many economic and cultural barriers facing foreigners in Japan.
DSP Group Inc. is one such company. The Californian-based semiconductor manufacturer generates nearly half its profits from sales in Japan. That is why the firm's chief executive office moved with his family to Tokyo and lived there for more than one year, cultivating Japanese customers and suppliers. The Tokyo office consists of six desks wedged into a tiny building, but DSP executives see it as a good start in ‘fitting in'. One says, "To compete in the consumer electronics market, we have to be here."
DSP management has also learned to take care of the details. Japanese consumers are discriminating buyers, and small imperfections - small, that is, by American standards - are large for Asian customers. Japanese customers pay close attention to the quality of work put into products, and notice such things as shoddy soldering or welding. Even a slight imperfection can kill a sale if a Japanese consumer questions whether all the products are made poorly. Sloppy packaging signals careless manufacturing to Japanese consumers, so DSP devotes extra care to packaging.
Finally, DSP managers and other foreign businesspeople who want to make money in Japan must learn to watch their image. Firms that sell items through catalogues have found it prudent to remove some low-priced products from Japanese catalogues even though the same products are big sellers in other countries. Why? Japanese consumers tend to judge products according to their product lines and overall performance of their manufacturers. If some catalogue items seem cheap, Japanese consumers may very well question the quality of all the merchandise in the catalogue.
Question:
(a) (i) Explain what you understand by low-context and high-context cultures.
(ii) From reading this case, explain how culture has an impact on the way we communicate, taking into consideration the medium of communication that DSP used for its product.
(b) Discuss some key cultural differences between the United States and Japan.
(c) Explain how these cultural differences can affect business communication patterns.
(d) (i) What can the U.S firms or firms from any other country, learn about doing business in Japan from reading this case?
(ii) Does collaboration make it easier or harder to work through the complexities of a different culture? Support your answers with valid examples.