I saw this article about biscuits and business on the BBC, and although it isn't very serious, it was fun and interesting to read. We've just been reading about and discussing cultural influences on psychological disorders, and I was wondering if this is also something that is determined by culture. Do businesses serve clients biscuits in your country? What kind? What else? How important are they?
Personally, I don't like digestives very much, but I love shortbread. And that seems odd to me, because the best short bread is a bit crumbly, and the article says that shortbread is popular, but that crumbly biscuits are not popular! It sounds confused.
And this report is both very short and easy to read - it isn't by Steven Pinker.
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
10 comments:
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It sounds interesting!!!!
ReplyDeleteActually, I don't like biscuits especially someting with chocolate.
Because Sometime, someting very sweet make me feel(taste) bitter.
In korea, I never seen people serve biscuits when they have business meeting. Maybe it depends on workplace. But I remember when I worked in bank long time ago, we served candy to customer. I sure that our customers were very happy with that even small thing. They might have felt our concerning.
In Thailand, I seen people serve bread from the bakery, such as cake, custard, sandwich, and cookies more than biscuits. The bakery is popular because most Thai people like to eat milk, butter, and cream that are the components of bread, and bread is a convenient food. They can put it into pouch pocket when they go out and eat it when they hungry. These make the bakery popular in Thai and popular serve in meeting with tea or coffee.
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ReplyDeleteI do agree with gus that In Thailand, we usually served bakery or sandwich and I'm the one who don't like biscuit too. anyway, I don't think that biscuit can make clients to deal with the firm just because of bucuits. It may make clients impress with your services but It's not an important thing for clients to make a dicision to dobusiness with the firm.
ReplyDeleteBusiness meeting in Korea, people tend to serve coffee or tea with water like in Thailand. According to one businessman, when client visit your office, it's a bad idea to serve coffee without asking them. Because they have many chance to have coffee, but it's difficult to refuse or not drink in front of people.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite interesting!!!
ReplyDeleteI do agree in this message because I believe that the test of food can influences the consumer's feeling and during the serious meeting, the little sweet biscuit will be good for all attendances. During the serious meeting, the attendances' brain consume more energy than usual, so it's possible that the biscuit can change the feeling because of the test and energy which it was given to the attendances. However, My favourite biscuit is coconut and chocolate test, not custars cream. Moreover, It will be useful if there were someone survey what the favourite test is in each country so that I can prepare some for my meeting.
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ReplyDeleteI worked as a secretary quite for long time, so I'm interested in this article a lot. I mean, I served a lot of people in meeting, I met a lot of situations which were related snack. As J said, maybe 10 years ago, it was unusual that serve snack(include biscuit, candy or chocolate, etc) because business person thought that when they do business meeting, they have to consider and concentrate it. And they thought that eating something in meeting, it's not very polite. But as my experience, at least, half of them liked snack and when they talk with eating something, they looked more relax and finished meeting with smile; especially, when higher position person offer snack to lower and try to eat first, the atmosphere of meeting become smooth and warm. Korea influenced many other cultures throughout the way of life. Therefore, business and meeting culture are changing gradually. And I herad that sweets involve some elements which make person feel better, so if it is true, sweets or snack can bring better outcome from meeting.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read this topic it make me surprised because I haven't known about it before that biscuits can help make a deal.It's a little thing that I used to overlook.However,I try to think about the reason and think that biscuit has a sweet taste and can make people have a good emotion when they eat it because it relates to chemical substance in their brains that make him feel happy,so it may help a firm to make a deal.
ReplyDeleteI think that this topic is interesting and give more information about biscuit related with business. I studied about Food & Nutrition ,so I know that some substance in food has an effect on people's emotion and feeling. When businessman have negotiation, most of them have some biscuits with beverages such as coffee, tea, cocoa. This makes customer and businessman feel relaxing and help the conversation more smooth. Moreover, In Thailand has several taste of biscuits which depend on personal taste, if sellers know a favorite biscuit of customer, they will be successful in negotiation. There are some movies and comic books which have mention like this case that I have ever watched and read them.
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