Personal Selling Interactions: Global Versus Local Principles

Changing economic conditions drive firms to identify those activities that can be conducted with a global perspective, leaving other activities, such as personal selling to local decision makers. However, some personal selling methods are successfully marketed on a worldwide basis with very little local adaptation. The choice between these centralized or local systems may be influenced by cultural factors, which are likely to be overlooked by foreign managers. The problem therefore is to identify which aspects of personal selling interactions are influenced by culture.