Cultural stereotyping in international business relationships

The role of culture in the development of international buyer/seller relationships has attracted the attention of academics and practitioners in marketing and management (for example, Adler 1997; Dabholkar, Johnston & Cathey 1994; Hofstede 1994; Soutar, Grainger & Hedges 1999). This paper examines the role of national culture and stereotyping in the development of a potential buyer/seller relationship, that is, their influence at the early development stage of the relationship. Australia, Ireland and Singapore were the three countries chosen for the study. A two-stage methodology involved convergent interviews and a survey to determine the impact of cultural stereotyping on the buyer/seller relationship across these three countries. In the preliminary findings, respondents said that stereotypes were present at the early stage of the relationship and could hinder the later progress of the potential partnership. These findings are the focus of this paper and were used in the second stage methodology of a survey. Implications of these findings are that even though international trade is becoming the norm for some countries, marketing practitioners still need to be mindful of stereotypes when developing relationships with their buying and selling agents.