Running Head: CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE BUSINESS

Cultural Diversity in the Business Eriene Oh Salt Lake Community College

BUS 1050 Roger D. Lee August 10, 2013

CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE BUSINESS Cultural Diversity in the Business Introduction

Cultural diversity is a concept that businesses today should value and embrace in order to become successful competitors in the global market. The online version of the Oxford dictionary defines culture as the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society. (Oxford Online Dictionary, 2013). As the world is an enormous place with many different people and cultures in it, there are also myriad markets that cater to the needs of individual consumers. Therefore, in order for a business to be globally competitive, its products and services must be accessible and able to cater to the needs of this globally diverse market. This position paper addresses two main components that make up cultural diversity in the business and analyzes it from multiple angles. The two main components consist of the business culture as well as the consumer culture.

Analysis In the business world, cultural diversity can be said to be the core of the whole process of trade. Take for example, the business and the consumer. Within the business, you have the business culture, which includes professionals who are trained or have the skills to do the job that they do. Ultimately, all of them in the company have the same goal to work towards the companys success by selling their products or services to consumers. On the other hand, you have the consumer culture. They are most likely the ones who are seeking to buy a service or product to suit a specific need. These two cultures are different and within them, diversity exists.

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So then, what are the perks of a business valuing and embracing cultural diversity in the workplace? Well, for one, the diverse perspectives that individual professionals bring to the table can result in a product that appeals to the masses. The varying levels of experience, background, culture and beliefs when brought together into a melting pot, will definitely make into a soup that is complex and exciting which is much better than a soup that is made from a uniform ingredient.

To elaborate on that point, I will throw out one word, which is: collaboration. Collaboration is such a wonderful thing and a testament of it is in all the man-made things that we have today. For example, the Wheel, which dates back to 3000 B.C., was worked upon and improved by many people before being used by visionary inventors such as Karl Friedrich Benz in the mid-1880s to build the first automobile (History.com, 2013; Library of Congress, 2011). The reason collaboration produces so much success is because you have two or more people who are different (in the sense of experience, specialization, talents and etcetera) who can bounce ideas off each other to determine the best and final outcome of the pool of ideas generated.

Besides that, cultural diversity is an asset to have in a business because it can increase the appeal of a product to a particular target consumer. As an example, people around the world identify with Coca-Cola. However, their global success cannot be credited to just one headquarters, department or individual. To clarify, the Coca-Cola products would not have been as successful as they are now in Malaysia if they had been solely working from their headquarters in the United States to market to the Malaysian people. In order for them to achieve

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this success, they had to outsource to another company (F&N Berhad) and have that local company market their product for them (F&N.com, 2007). By doing this, that local company is able to do a better job of marketing and reaching out to the people that they share a culture with than if the team from the United States were to do the same job.

Another reason why a business should embrace cultural diversity is because of the vast sea of talents that it can recruit from. This way, a business can pick the best candidate most suited for the needs of the company. To put simply, the business will benefit from the variety of hiring choice that it is given, in the global market. By looking at it at a global scale, the business will have the choice to hire from the best and brightest in the world.

Shifting our focus onto the next aspect of cultural diversity among consumers, we can also find many benefits that this plays for the business. In his TED talk given in February 2004, Malcolm Gladwell talked about a man called Howard Moskowitz who is a doctorate in psychophysics. In his talk, he makes mention that Campbells Prego spaghetti sauce was struggling to Ragu in 1980s. Campbell came to Moskowitz to for help and he then collected data from people all over the United States. What he concluded was that all the people he surveyed could be grouped into three categories: Plain, Spicy and Extra Chunky. At that time, there was not an extra chunky spaghetti sauce. Of course, this data then resulted in the invention of the Extra Chunky spaghetti sauce, which generated a profit of 600 million dollars for Campbell over the next 10 years. Gladwell ends his talk with this sentence: In embracing the diversity of human beings, we will find a surer way to true happiness. (TED, 2004).

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By creating a market for extra chunky spaghetti sauce, Prego managed to monopolize and rise to the top of the spaghetti sauce game. Not to forget, by doing this, they also managed to increase the happiness and satisfaction of their consumers who preferred the extra chunky sauce better. From a business perspective, they managed to locate the market gap and appropriately produce a product that would fill that gap.

Likewise, businesses can follow this model and by having open doors to cultural diversity, there is no end to how many gaps in the market there is. One only has to search for them. Furthermore, there is a better chance for a business to become successful when their products are exposed to more markets. An analogy to illustrate this point is a lottery. In a lottery, it is common knowledge that if you buy more tickets, your chance of winning is higher.

Conclusion In ending, cultural diversity is definitely one thing that all business should embrace and value, in the business as well as in their consumer base. Among the benefits that cultural diversity brings to the business are: Ideas Collaboration Insight to a certain culture Talent

Other than that, when looking at a consumer spectrum, cultural diversity is also beneficial to a business as not only are there constantly emerging market gaps, there is also a variety of target consumers to choose from.

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Reference List

Culture. (n.d.). In Oxford Dictionary online. Retrieved from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/culture Fraser and Neave. (n.d.). About us. Food & Beverage. http://www.fraserandneave.com/FN_aboutus_our_heritage_fb.asp Gladwell, M. (Speaker). (2004, February). Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce. Video retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html History.com. (n.d.). Modern Marvels: Great Inventions. Video retrieved from http://www.history.com/shows/modern-marvels/videos/who-invented-the-wheel#whoinvented-the-wheel The Library of Congress. (n.d.). Science Reference Services. Everyday Mysteries. Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/auto.html