Nordic company having problems in Japan

A Nordic company we worked with had recently started a joint venture with the Japanese. Things seemed to have ground to a halt after a promising start, and the Japanese were stalling about the marketing plan. The product was going to be marketed under the name of the Nordic firm. No-one on the Japanese side had objected to this, but questioning our clients identified that something connected to the plan marked the joint venture in relations with the Japanese. Through digging deeper, and using our cultural knowledge of the Japanese, we were able to build a hypothesis together. It was that the Japanese company might be concerned about their reputation and market position, and potentially losing face with their rivals. Further, that they might not feel able to bring up the topic openly with their Nordic counterparts because they assumed they would be equally concerned about their own name, and that they may feel that the Japanese would be making them lose face by suggesting that the product should be marketed with a different name. The Nordics said that their main aim was to get the product distributed and that marketing under the Japanese name was no problem for them. They were then able to go back to their partner and suggest the new plan themselves. The situation was resolved immediately, everyone's face was saved, and the venture was a great success.

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