Mexico

Not understanding the cultural aspects of doing business overseas can jeopardize the success of international negotiations, entry strategies, joint ventures, technology transfer, marketing, and human resources. This article reports a study of the perceptions of U.S. and Mexican executives concerning the importance of 15 cultural dimensions of doing business in Mexico (our second largest trading partner). It found that, whereas Mexican executives believed more strongly than U.S. executives that the cultural dimensions of doing business in Mexico were more important than the product or service offered and the accompanying terms of sale, the U.S. executives, surprisingly, assigned higher levels of importance to the 15 cultural variables. Both Mexican and U.S. executives strongly agreed on which of the 15 variables were most important. All eight subgroups of U.S. executives assigned higher levels of importance to the 15 cultural aspects of doing business in Mexico than did their Mexican counterparts. When four comparisons of the executives of the eight subsets of U.S. companies‐large vs. small, border location vs. nonborder location, doing business in Mexico vs. not doing business there, and doing business there more than 5 years (pre‐NAFTA) vs. doing business there 5 years or less (post‐NAFTA)—were made of the level of importance they attached to the cultural variables, no significant differences were found. Based on the study's findings, implications for doing business in Mexico are indicated. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.