5 Intercultural Competence

5.0 Statement of the problem

Negotiations in Japan

Thomas Schneider, a distinguished and successful employee in the export department of a medium-sized German pharmaceutical company, has just returned from a business trip to Japan. He is asked by his colleague Bernd Neumann, how the sales negotiations with the Japanese partners have gone.

Neumann: How did the negotiations in Kyoto proceed? Could you apply the Japanese skills from your last language course?
Schneider: Things worked out well with the Japanese, but the negotiations didn’t go as smoothly as I’d imagined. We had to make significant price concessions.
Neumann: Did the Japanese drive such a hard bargain? That wasn’t normally to be expected.
Schneider: ...

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