Cultural Humility Is a Market-Entry Strategy
By Fiona van Iersel
Minerva Empowerment
International Marketing
14 July 2025

When a brand enters a new country, it carries more than products. It carries assumptions about what looks good, what feels premium, how service should work and what customers are supposed to value.

That makes me ask a rather uncomfortable question: is the company learning about the market, or expecting the market to learn how to appreciate the company?

I am interested in cultural humility as a practical strategy. A retailer can investigate local preferences in clothing, price, service and shopping routines before deciding which parts of its existing model should travel. It can listen to local colleagues and customers without treating them as minor variations on a home-market norm.

The balance is not to abandon identity. A brand needs enough consistency to remain recognisable. But recognition is useful only if the offer also makes sense in the customer’s life.

I would test the assumptions most likely to be invisible inside the organisation. What does “quality” mean here? Which parts of the experience feel welcoming? What does the price communicate? What are customers comparing it with?

The strongest international strategy begins with curiosity. Entering a market is an invitation to understand it, not a request for everyone in it to become more like us.