Guilin Fengqing Travel Agency in China invited a Malaysian travel agency to negotiate a cross-border e-commerce business. The two parties agreed to negotiate at Guilin Ronghu Hotel at 10 am on a certain day. Fengqing Travel Agency sent a car to pick up the Malaysian travel agency representatives to Ronghu Hotel for negotiations. Since it was their first time to Guilin, they were so fascinated by the beautiful scenery of Guilin that they delayed the time on the road and arrived an hour late. Later, when discussing the price, the Chinese representative was a little unhappy because the transaction conditions and prices proposed by both parties were quite different. He lost patience and became emotional during the negotiation. He spoke too loudly and refused to make concessions on the conditions and prices. The Malaysian representatives were older and thought that the Chinese representatives’ words and actions were impolite and disrespectful to them. During the lunch, in order to enhance the relationship between the two sides, the Chinese representatives took out the special wine for receiving VIPs, Maotai, and tried their best to persuade the Malaysian representatives to drink it; and because the Chinese side ignored that the Malaysian travel agency representative was a Muslim, he ordered green vegetables during the lunch, but forgot to ask the chef not to fry them with lard. The Malaysian side thought that they were not sincere and left angrily, causing the negotiations to come to a deadlock.
Point of contention 1: The Malaysian side arrived one hour after the agreed time, which reflects the difference in the time concept between the two sides. As the host, China should reserve time for the other party to visit in advance and try to avoid too close negotiation time.
Point of contention 2: The Malaysian side believes that the words and actions of the Chinese representatives are impolite to them. In terms of respect for the order of seniority, China and Malaysia are actually quite consistent. The emotions caused by the Chinese representatives losing patience in the negotiations are the ignition point. The psychological quality of the Chinese negotiating representatives needs to be improved.
Point of contention 3: The Chinese side likes to drink, and alcohol is indispensable at the negotiation table, but the Malaysian side does not think so. It is inappropriate to force the Malaysian side to drink, which may cause discomfort.
Point of contention 4: The Chinese side has noticed that the Malaysian representatives are Muslims and avoided pork products, but they can’t prevent it and missed lard, which is actually caused by negligence in details.
Key points: In this case, the Chinese side spoke too loudly because the negotiations were not going smoothly and the two sides had great differences in price. This non-verbal behavior made the Malaysian representatives think that the Chinese side did not respect the Malaysian representatives, which led to a stalemate in the negotiations. It can be seen that understanding the other party’s non-verbal behavior habits before the negotiation, mastering and using certain non-verbal skills in a targeted manner, can achieve twice the result with half the effort in promoting the smooth progress of cross-border e-commerce negotiations.
Conclusion: This case can fully illustrate that there are differences in cultural identity between the two countries in cross-border negotiations. To avoid the problems caused by this difference in negotiations, a lot of information retrieval and adaptation are required. Therefore, it is very necessary to consult relevant materials on cross-cultural communication before the negotiation.
In addition to the cultural differences in the non-verbal behavior of the two negotiation teams, the non-verbal behavior within the same negotiation team will also affect the negotiations. If effective cooperation is carried out, such as the auxiliary negotiator responding to “yes”, “that’s right”, “that’s right” and other expressions of agreement, sometimes leaning forward to show interest, looking at the chief negotiator and nodding at the same time. On the contrary, leaning back indicates displeasure or being out of the negotiation. If other team members look around, get distracted, or whisper to each other while the chief negotiator is speaking, the weight of the chief negotiator’s words will be weakened in the other party’s mind, affecting the other party’s understanding.