Intercultural Communication

DOMESTIC PHASE Historically, most firms initially operated from a domestic, or ethnocentric, perspective.
Firms produced unique products and services that they offered almost exclusively to the domestic market.
The uniqueness of the product or service and the lack of international competition negated the firm’s need
to demonstrate sensitivity to national cultural differences. When firms exported products, they often did so
without altering them for foreign consumption. Foreign buyers, rather than the home country productdesign, manufacturing, or marketing teams, absorbed the inconvenience of inherent cultural differences. In
this phase, products from English-speaking countries, for example, were sent to non-English speaking
countries without translating the packaging into the local language. In some ways the implicit message sent
to people outside the home country was “We will allow you to buy our product”; and, of course, the
assumption was that foreigners would want to buy. During this initial phase, people, assumptions, and
strategies from the headquarter’s country dominated management: firms in the domestic phase regarded
cross-cultural management and global human resource systems as largely irrelevant.…