Communication activities. Task 24. Sometimes products don’t sell well in a new market

Task 24. Sometimes products don’t sell well in a new market. Work in groups. Suggest what went wrong in these cases.

1. Western companies had problems selling refrigerators in Japan until they changed the design to make them quieter.

2. In Saudi Arabia, newspaper adverts for an airline showed an attractive flight attendant serving champagne to happy passengers. A lot of passengers cancelled their flight reservations.

3. A soap powder advertisement had a picture of dirty clothes on the left, a box of soap in the middle and clean clothes on the right. The soap didn’t sell well in the Middle East.

4. Several European and American firms couldn’t sell their products in Dubai when they ran their advertising campaign in Arabic.

5. An airline company called itself Emu, after the Australian bird. But Australians didn’t want to use the airline.

6. A TV commercial for a cleaning product showed a little girl cleaning up the mess her brother made. The commercial caused problems in Canada.

7. A toothpaste manufacturer couldn’t sell its product in parts of South East Asia.

8. An American golf ball manufacturer launched its products in Japan packed in boxes of four. It had to change the pack size.

Here are the reasons for the problems, but they are in the wrong order. Number them from 1 to 8.

ð In Japanese the word for ‘four’ sounds like the word for ‘death’. Things don’t sell well packed in fours.

ð People thought the commercial was too sexist and reinforced old male/female stereotypes.

ð Unveiled women don’t mix with men in Saudi Arabica and alcohol is illegal.

ð 90% of the population of United Arab Emirates came from Pakistan, India, Iran, and elsewhere, so Arabic was the wrong language.

ð The advertisers forgot that in that part of the world, people usually read from right to left.

ð The people in this area didn’t want white teeth. They thought darkly-stained teeth were beautiful and they tried to blacken them.

ð Japanese homes were small and sometimes walls were made of paper. It was important for the refrigerators to be quiet.

ð The emu can’t fly.