International Business Strategy

From the first reading I have learnt various interesting things, but I would start with culture which was brought up in this reading again. Taking the definition from Goodenough (1971), he defines culture as "a set of beliefs or standards, which are shared by a group of people, which help the individual decide what is, what can be, how to feel, what to do and how to go about doing it"

Also taking a look at the definition of culture from Ralph Linton (1945, p.21) he sees culture as "the configuration of learned behaviour and results of behaviour whose component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society"

The synopsis of these definitions is that companies, individuals, organizations or establishment do things differently and in ways that applies to the environment which they find themselves in order to suit the culture of the country they are. In other words it would be absolutely wrong for a company to sell pork produce in Muslim populated country as this would merely not appeal to the needs of the people. In the reading as it was noted McDonalds a famous brand name adapted its business strategy to suit the environment in which it is situated, i.e. for example in Greece it offers the Greek Mac which is similar to the Big Mac in UK and U.S, but served with the famous Greek pitta bread and yoghurt. It would be foolish for McDonald to go to China and serve the Greek pitta bread and yoghurt knowing it would not appeal to the culture of China. Thus there are similarities in doing business in the global arena.