Many foreign companies never start a business in Japan or only enter the Japanese market through a distributor simply because of the misconceptions, fuelled by rumours of doing business in Japan. Japanese business culture is not an impenetrable barrier to successful business in Japan, as proven by companies like Yahoo!, BMW, and many others. Japanese business culture is different to that of the US or Europe, but the differences do not make it any more risky to do business in Japan than elsewhere in the world. In fact, certain aspects of Japan's business culture, especially the very stable long-term relationships result from the conservative Japanese sense of loyalty to trusted partners, and this can be very beneficial for those foreign companies who understand it.
The corporate culture within Japan is different to the corporate culture in the West. As a comparison, In the West, business is simply about profit seeking but within the Japanese business world, the corporation is not seen as they are for just profit. Profit is important, but it is not the only reason for the company's existence, it involves people and their future. The company is a living society and its profit is used as nourishment for growth in the company.
It is important to understand some basic values and …show more content…
A happy customer means more spending, more investments. Unfortunately many foreign company executives doing business in Japan for the first time, do not recognize the differences - primarily because when traveling they think that they are 'off duty' - they consider their first encounter with Japanese business culture to be when they arrive at a Japanese customer or distributor's office for their first business meeting when in fact it all starts when they arrive at the