Linguistic Cultures in Tandem to International Business Expansion

In order to identify the relationship between factors of cultural traits and the degree of success that is seen within international business expansion, it proves to be crucial to identify and into existing bodies of research on such a topic. There were sources that identified a variety of specific cultural traits, or cultures altogether, some of which suggested that there is a harmonious relationship between both cultural traits/culture, as business expansion cannot be separated from one another as they are mutually linked to one another (Goldman, 2021; Raj 2023). Both studies devoted their attention into deducing the impact of cultural traits, which are ultimately defined as attributes of a niche culture that were created and shared through means of communication, such as commerce. Additionally, they claimed that “international business negotiation and culture are inseparable: international business negotiation is a process of communication; culture is catalyst for the process of communication”. This study implies that both international business in the forms of commerce and negotiation are ultimately related with one another with culture, where it ultimately prompts for the development of differentiating negotiation/bargaining styles in order to overcome cultural differences that hinder the degree of commerce available between two cultures. Similar to that of the sources previously mentioned, others state that “the impact of cultural differences in international marketing is an important factor that cannot be ignored”. Akin to that of the conclusions that were drawn from Qu, the results ultimately convey the message in which that culture regardless of its form plays a vital role when it comes to consumer behavior and the overall wellbeing of the international market. Unfortunately, both of these studies are limited in the fact that neither of them definitively define what their interpretation of some terminology means, leading to the issue of interpretation to plague the overall argument. Regardless of such faults, they are still sufficient examples of sources that help display the overall correlation that both cultural traits/differences and the international markets, which can be tied into the success of business expansion. While these sources demonstrate the harmonious relationship between cultural traits and international business, it failed to bring up what exactly cultural traits were. Thus, a couple of sources were thoroughly checked to properly establish the definition of cultural traits throughout this study. One of these sources sought to utilize cultural traits as a unit of analysis, interpreting it as units of transmission that ostensibly reflect behavioral characteristics of the individuals or groups exhibiting the traits (O’Brien 2010). This interpretation of cultural traits, while relatively specific, seemed to be overly niche to the point where it could even be considered irrelevant to what this study was seeking to answer. Thus, another source was also taken into consideration regarding the definition of cultural traits, defining it as “a cultural trait is an attribute of a specific culture that has been socially created and transmitted to others by various means of communication” (Hunter, 2023). Further sources that sought to identify the simplistic connection between the broad identity of culture in relation to business expansion deduced that “cultural traits play major roles amongst businesses and should ultimately utilize culture as a way to benefit from corporate policies and internal decisions” (Johnson, 2021). These sources, while differing slightly, all aim towards identifying the broad connection between culture and business expansion, signifying the copious quantity of sources related to this matter. This means that this specific topic is relatively too broad and must be shortened.

The first two sources ultimately begged the question of what defines the “cultural traits” that were of importance in their studies. While there are numerous different interpretations as to what exactly defines “cultural traits”, the cumulative definitions of the particular sources collectively defines cultural traits as differentiating forms of unique/niche characteristics between groups of people. Examples of these characteristics include broad categories of culture, such as their language, traditions, and religious beliefs. It is this definition that has bridged the gap as this study gradually narrows down sources throughout the literature review to properly establish its gap. It’s apparent that differing linguistic cultures could potentially cause issues when it comes to business expansion, but could also quite possibly benefit the goal of internationally expanding their businesses when properly taking into account of such differences.

The amount of studies that focus on identifying the relationship between cultural differences and the degree of international business expansion indeed is far more copious compared to that of the number of studies that help depict the issues of intercultural communication in tandem with the globalization of business. The lack of these studies helps demonstrate the gradual progression towards finding the gap. Nevertheless, the aim towards establishing a model/approach that would allow for the application of intercultural communication regardless of the scenario, country, or culture. They aim in creating a model in order to further the understanding regarding the elements of culture/intercultural communication while enhancing the development of skills in the dimensions of intercultural competence. This can be seen in some studies, one particularly where it concludes that “there have been a number of models developed to facilitate the analysis, characterization, and understanding of cultures… while there is a significant amount of research available, none of the experts exactly agree, and some of them dispute each other’s conclusions” (Dzenowagis, 2008). This similar study deduced that “these findings provide a solid foundation and interesting insights for future research in this area… First, our review showed an interesting gap in the literature on cultural distance- there Dzenowagis, appears to be very little work examining its effects on managerial and organizational aspects of internationalization”. The conclusions of this study helps elaborate and open a new path when it comes to identifying a gap in cultural distancing, where little work resides its particular aspects of internationalization. In short, when attempting to evaluate business models, the lack of sources deems it relatively inconsistent when it comes to applying it into the study as a capable factor in understanding the key relations between cultural distances.

This study’s interpretation of the term “business models”, is the plentiful amount of strategies in which businesses study revenue sources, consumer bases, and other factors that will influence the degree of success to which these businesses receive. Unfortunately, due to the lack of other sources that fail to define and establish their own interpretation of what “business models” are within their studies, this particular study will use this definition throughout the whole process.

Initially, this study wanted to attempt to analyze the relationship between culture and business expansion altogether. With culture being such a broad topic, numerous studies analyzing multiple aspects of culture in tandem with business expansion were relatively common.

Effectively evaluating the reasons as to why this study attempts to identify the exact effect that linguistic cultures have upon the degree of success in entrepreneurs expanding outside of U.S. international borders requires sources that help identify if such a relationship exists. Fortunately, there are few studies that identify that there is a distinct correlation between the idea in which linguistic cultures affect the degree of success a business has and vice versa, starting from its employees (Seeger, 2021; Gustafsson, 2021). This study particularly aimed to investigate a single case company (IKEA) in order to explore barriers to intercultural communication, in which it concluded that the main barrier to intercultural communication, according to the respondents of the study was due to language. With English being the primary language for IKEA businesses globally, languages such as Japanese were shunned but are still heavily utilized in stores located in Japan. Communication proves to be an important factor to the respondents who participated in the study. Additionally, such results demonstrated that there are numerous factors on top of language that determines the efficiency of these workers have when working in their usual environment. This can be seen through the fact that employees whose fluency in Japanese were not exceptionally good were often portrayed as a negative trait by customers, which heavily affects their overall value to said companies. It should be taken into consideration that this specific type of scenario regarding Ikea locations within Japan can be applicable to other countries. Unfortunately, there isn’t as much information to show such a trend between employees, language fluency, and overall efficiency.

The latter source provided a narrowed scope of which it determined that there were already very few sources relating to information that goes into the intricate details regarding success in businesses when it comes to employees respecting linguistic traditions. While the source provided the fact that there seems to be a deficit in sources that analyze certain aspects of businesses in tandem with linguistics, there seemed to be an absurd amount of linguistic factors that have yet to be analyzed. The study sought to identify the connection between employee value and how much they respect Japanese linguistic traditions, which opens up the gateway to numerous aspects of businesses and how they might generally be affected by linguistics as a whole as well. To further establish the gap of this study, further studies were researched regarding the relationship between linguistic cultures and the employees of businesses of which were seeking to expand internationally. Research that sought to identify the degree of value that is applied to employees/people that are bilingual has ultimately deduced that the new economy calls for a multilingual approach to educating America’s children, and the evidence now suggests that these young multilingual individuals will be well rewarded in the future for this human capital that they bring to school and to the labor market (Gandara 2012).

The gap in which there is a lack of information that justifyingly identifies the direct correlation between linguistic cultures and the degree of success that entrepreneurs/business owners/higher-ups have regarding international expansion was identified, which ultimately leads to the creation of a relevant research question. The research will be heavily based around evaluating and identifying business owners that seek to expand their business internationally, rather than utilizing world-wide businesses that have already given themselves prestigious names. Such a lack in research regarding the evaluation of how owners expand their business rather than the company in itself showcases the gap that the research question seeks to answer. Thus, this study’s research question ponders to what extent has addressing the differentiating linguistic cultures in target market locations affected the degree of success for adult entrepreneurs/executives of businesses who had sought to expand their brand name/influence outside of the U.S.. With this creation of this study’s research question, this study’s hypothesis infers that the success of adult entrepreneurs and business leaders (ages 18 and above) in expanding businesses into locations outside of the U.S. internationally is significantly influenced by the ability to navigate and adapt to varying linguistic cultures, which suggests that a high degree of proficiency in cross-cultural communication correlates with the extent of success in global business expansion efforts. Thus, this study’s contributions to the topic will be invaluable because of the fact that it will prioritize how the owners themselves take into consideration of factors (linguistic cultural differences/similarities) and will hopefully encourage more business owners and professionals to step forth and conduct international business with the goal of being less intimidated by differences in linguistic cultures. Thus, the reading question of this particular study will be as followed: “To what extent do differentiating linguistic cultures affect the degree of success for entrepreneurs/higher-ups of businesses (ages 18 or above) that have (preferably) multiple locations across the U.S. who seek to expand their businesses outside of the U.S? The question is niche in its own way, as it attempts to evaluate business owners who are already aware of the idea of expansion through the fact that they had already locally expanded within the U.S. This plays into the development of the methodology, where it will be an interviewing process that seeks to interrogate business owners and draw out the information or procedures that they take in order to tackle the issues of differentiating linguistic cultures. Additionally, interviewing the employees of these businesses could further allow for a better understanding of the perspectives that the employees face with regards to linguistic cultures that they are faced with, and how exactly they combat such differences. It is a rather straight-forward approach that explores the multifaceted relationship between linguistic cultures/the degree of success amongst businesses that aim to internationally expand.

The results of this study can heavily contribute to the increasing percentage of success for international business in addition to the increased examples of young adults. It will deeply analyze and investigate not only examples that help serve as indications of actions that should/shouldn’t be taken into consideration for the sake of these adults’ businesses, thereby allowing for future business leaders to be granted pre-existing knowledge when it comes to international business expansion. This will be crucial for the overall success of the upcoming generations that plan on supporting the economy while also becoming part of the workforce.

With the goal of collecting information regarding the steps and actions these executives have committed on behalf of their business in addition to testing the hypothesis, I found it optimal to conduct structured interviews as the proper method in order to draw out as much information as possible that could then be processed and used as evidence that could help determine the accuracy behind the hypothesis. For reference, structured interviews are interviews that assess the efficiency/success of candidates by “inquiring about their behavior in past experiences and/or their proposed behavior in hypothetical situations” (OPM). Since structured reviews are relatively straightforward is retrieving information from firsthand experiences from said candidates, there aren’t many flaws or issues that are to be anticipated by using this type of method. That said, it is to be taken into consideration that the interview must ask questions that cannot be simply answered with a yes or no and their usefulness is entirely dependent on how much the candidates elaborate upon their experiences on top of the fact that there might be issues regarding lying and such. Nonetheless, structured interviews were selected to be the method of retrieving data relevant to the study because of how effective they are at bringing in information that is entirely based off of the experiences of the people that are interviewed which is ultimately valuable information that can be used in this study. Thus, structured interviews were employed due to their aligned design and purpose with the interests of what this study sought to accomplish.

Elaborating on what exact candidates would be fitting for this particular study, the criteria for these candidates was relatively simple. In order for the hypothesis to be answered/justified, the participants that would be interviewed would have to go through numerous areas of criteria in order to follow through with being interviewed. Such criteria included the characteristic in which the business they own/are a part of have already experienced some form of international expansion regardless of where their brand name was expanded into. Additionally, these executives/candidates also must generally have the same business model and because of the fact that there were only two businesses that were selected as a total, there wasn’t any need to delegate or select these businesses as the sample size was too discrete to separate or remove any one of the businesses. The expectation of both of the structured interviews was the idea that to some extent, both of these businesses faced some issue when it came to expanding their business/brand name internationally, whether it be due to lack of experience or not acknowledging the differentiating cultural traits present with the area in which they attempted to expand within. Both interviews featured the exact same array of 10 questions that asked about the executive’s decision and past actions for their business when it came to the idea of expanding their business/brand name internationally, and both were conducted through an online call. The questions were purposefully left to be open-ended to allow the executives to elaborate on their end as much as they wanted to. All executives/owners that are interviewed will have their responses recorded and the discussions will be uploaded onto a computer. No information will be shared and once results are established and a fitting conclusion is reached, all recordings will be permanently erased and deleted from said computer. This is to ensure the safety that none of the interviewees are prone to exposure or harm in any way shape or form.

Regarding the recurrence of the educational theme from both executives, it’s clear that it proves to be the second rarest recurring theme of the four themes presented. The first table defines the theme of education as as the experiences that the executives had faced in the education industry as well as any advice they have given as a result of these experiences. From both of the responses of the two executives interviewed, it’s clear that a limitation that hindered the study is the idea that there can be numerous backgrounds that could lead up to the formation of a business, which is something that was simply not possible to identify due to the lack of participants that managed to fit the criteria. Regardless, both executives shared similar backgrounds but had differentiating driven passions behind what initiated their reaction to start a business. Both executives were students attending university, however, one was originally aiming to start a business based off of their pursuit in economics, whereas executive 1 had been part of the restaurant industry and had grown tired of the load of stress implemented onto them, thus driving them to find another way to achieve their own definition of success. As such, executive 1 stated, “Initially, I was a part-time worker at [REDACTED] while also attending [REDACTED] University. I couldn’t bear the workload that was given to me and I wanted to achieve success through other means and I created my business as a means of hopefully dropping my education. As for my reasoning for wanting to expand internationally, you could say that I wanted to increase my sources of income aside from just working at a mere restaurant.” As such, this evidence demonstrates that both executives stemmed from similar backgrounds and it clearly seems that many business owners were of educational origins from universities or colleges. This suggests that based on this particular sample size, it should be taken into consideration that this study’s conclusions could be relevant and provide insight to younger entrepreneurs/executives who are facing upcoming dilemmas regarding international expansion.

By analyzing the resulting themes that occurred from both of the executives’ response, it is clear that both the recurring theme of economic crisis and prosperity ultimately shared the exact same numerical value in terms of repetition. This is as a result of both of the executives clearly not properly adjusting or making preparations when it came to exposing their business/brand name to an entirely different audience, field with differentiating linguistic cultures and traditions. While executives 1 and 2 didn’t face the exact same issues, it’s clear that there are numerous fields and variables that could alter the degree of success businesses have when entering a new area where their target market resides, seen as in how executive #1 faced issues due to the faculty as a whole being inexperienced when it came to respecting the linguistic culture of the area around their newly created establishment. Executive 2 differed in which by having themself visit the area of where their target market resides, they were able to fully take in a higher degree of respect. However, executive 2 faced issues regarding culture as a whole because of their newly established location initially resulted in a lack of consumers because of how different the products that were sold there. Executive 2’s response to question 8 states, “My temporary stay in [REDACTED] fully allowed me to embrace the cultural disparities between there and our initial establishment’s location. In doing so, I made sure all of my employees were respectful and acknowledged the cultural integrity of the newly installed establishment of our brand. Not only did this allow for us to receive far less complaints than initially thought, but I was seeing increased levels of consumer loyalty which was unfortunately dulled out by the fact that our products simply weren’t relevant to that of the consumer base in this economy.” Such a response indicates that executive #2 was able to preemptively reduce the challenges/risks accompanied by naivety when it comes to international expansion through being able to mediate the information about the linguistic differences to his employees. Ultimately, the differences in responses between executives 1 and 2 differ in which they both are granted with success through different means.