It is fascinating how we view culture. Through our eyes and based on our past experiences. But do we miss the context sometimes?

I recently had an interesting experience that forced me to think in this direction…

This happened when we went to buy new phones for ourselves. It was a pending item on our list, and we took out sometime this week to check new iPhones at a nearby Apple store.

We have bought iPhones from an Apple store in India. So we were expecting a similar experience here in the US.

In India, I recall my interactions about 4 months back, when I took my sister-in-law to get her a new iPhone. The sales guy gave as much attention he could not only to explain the product to us but made sure he stayed with us till the time the transaction was closed. This, even when there were other customers in the store, checking out the phones or other products. Maybe, he had a knack of figuring out which customer would ultimately purchase, as I observed him quickly floating in and out of the conversation with us, and helping close the sale. But I was impressed that he could devote so much time to a single customer.

In the US, while we got attention from the sales rep at the store, she had others to attend to as well. Then, as we were taking our own time to decide, she got engaged with another customer. When we were ready to complete our purchase, she was indisposed and had to put us in a queue with a wait time of 30 minutes. We respected the process but as we wanted to trade in our devices only after duly transferring everything, we decided to instead order the phones online.

Eventually, Apple got our money for one of their products. However, I couldn’t help but wonder at the seemingly easy-going approach of the sales rep. I was almost going to classify her as being too high-handed but then realized that people here respect that they may not have someone’s attention all the time and are ready to wait their turn. That’s the culture they are accustomed to.

Now, I am no one to judge which system is better and am definitely not inclining toward any particular culture. All kinds of systems and cultures can work, provided they match the context and expectation of the constituents. But it is interesting to understand why these differences exist.

Imagine someone in India adopting the US approach to sales! He wouldn’t just risk losing the customer but will also most definitely get negative remarks on his scorecard. So, he will go all out to secure the business he sees on hand.

And specially if he is dealing with luxury products, like an iPhone, he will be expected to devote as much time to the customer as she needs. It will otherwise be considered rude and unbecoming of him. Plus he always will have this at the back of his mind that the customer can go and get another phone (or even the same phone) from a different shop next door. There’s just hyper competitiveness, fueling the need to be on top of the game at all times.

In the US, I presume the customer is walking in to the store knowing that they will need time to make a purchase. And they don’t have as many stores to purchase their phones from, for sure. So, the amount of competitiveness is lesser. More importantly, Apple being the dominant brand in the US, the brand recall is higher. It has hundreds of people walking in all day into their stores and the sales system works for most people and allows them to sell efficiently.

Difference in context, which leads to different cultures!

If a US citizen visits India and heads to a mobile shop, she will most likely feel that this sales person is behind her to buy the product, when in fact he would only be acting like he would with most customers. She will be coming from her experience and expectations and the sales person will be coming from his. Just like me, who was expecting a different experience but ended up with another.

The revelation? It is very easy to label cultures, to call out things that are not as per expectations, to make fun of those ‘other’ people. It is however in most cases not the entire picture. We need to look deeper into the context of the other person/party to understand where they are coming from and to respect their culture.

That is if we are trying to be genuine…