Skinship and Flattery Through the American Customer's Eyes

By Kim Yu-jo'ng

Most of Koreans might have heard complaint about Korean life from the lips of foreign visitors and residents that people push and crowd too much on the streets and on the subways. This may be a result of not understanding cultural gap. Unexceptionally, Korea has a certain cultural background, which is sometimes the source of frustration and misunderstanding among foreigners. Skinship and flattery can be the examples of those. Korean salespeople successfully use techniques of skinship and flattery for establishing rapport; however, these two techniques probably wouldn't work in the US.

In order to create an affinity between seller and customer, a Korean salesperson succeeds in leading the customer to buy the product by means of skinship, but it most likely wouldn't apply to American customers because of different perspectives of personal space. Based on the fact that Korea is a touch culture, a successful Korean salesperson tries to keep close distance between him and the customer as a way of establishing a bond of rapport. According to the article written by Poitras, who worked as a missionary in Korea for 30 years, Koreans are used to having reassuring physical contact around them, and they think nothing of bumping into each other on crowded streets. And Korean customers seem even more comfortable when they are surrounded by others. For instance, when I went to the cosmetic shop, a saleslady came up to me, putting her hand on my back and saying, "Come on in and look around. Do you have anything in particular that you're looking for?" This saleslady continuously coaxed me to buy her product still with her hands on my back and sometimes on my shoulder. I felt as if she were my elder sister; as a result, I bought the one that the saleslady strongly recommended, even though it was quite expensive. Not only I but also average Korean customers will probably react positively to the successful salesperson's selling technique of skinship since there is something in Korean psyche which seeks company and prefers to be surrounded by others rather than remain alone. In contrast, the technique of skinship that a Korean salesperson uses to get in sync with the customer perhaps wouldn't work in the US due to American's different concept of personal bubble. According to the DRS article, Poitras's article, and The Business of Korean Culture by Richard Saccone, the comfortable distance to stand for two acquainted adult male Americans is from arm's length to about four feet apart. If this individual's bubble is breached, he will retreat to add the proper distance. Considering the amount of space Americans need, we can obviously see that American customers would surely feel disturbed by Korean salespeople's close contact. While you're traveling in Korea, chances are you will find an American shopper stepping out of the store with frowning face and complaining that a sales agent pushed too hard against him and that the salesperson invaded the person's personal space.

In addition to the technique of skinship, a successful Korean salesperson uses the technique of flattery to build trust between him and the customer, which most likely would be regarded as insincere and empty words by American customers. If one is a talented sales agent in Korea, he will hit the customer with a barrage of soft and seductive words to make the customer buy their product. They usually make good comments on the customers' clothes, jewelry, hairstyle, or features. Then Korean customers respond to these sweet words head on and are likely to buy things on the spur of the moment. By way of illustration, one of my friends went to the Dongdae Moon shopping mall, located in the busiest downtown area in Seoul. She wanted to buy a red coat and found one that perfectly fit her needs. When she was taking a close look at the coat to see whether or not there were any minor defects on it, a salesperson started his sales pitch with words of flattery such as "Since your skin is very fair, the red color wonderfully matches your skin and thus, this coat will make your fair complexion stand out." And he continued his flattery with another comment on her watch, saying, "Where did you buy this watch? It looks gorgeous." She blushed at the salesperson's compliments and then took out her purse to buy the red coat. Those honeyed words of the salesperson made buying the product irresistible. I would say that this happens all the time in many shops in Korea since whenever I went to the shopping malls, I have witnessed not a few cases in which many Korean customers, not to speak of my friend mentioned right above, were very much influenced by the sales agents' flatteries. American customers, on the other hand, would perchance react negatively to this flattery because they think, "Talk is cheap." A case in point is an American customer who shopped at one of the stores in Itaewon, where many foreign travelers usually visit for shopping when they come to Korea. My friend told me that when his friend, a Korean merchant at Itaewon, tried flattery on American customers, he found that the customers appeared to be disturbed and they just walked out of the store with empty hands, yet when he tried his sales pitch without using flattery, the sales turned out to be quite successful. Korean salespeople will have to cut down on their use of flattery in their sales pitches for American tourists, especially when many American visitors come to Korea for 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup and go shopping in many places.

The issue of touching, in general, is different between East and West. Something that is a simple gesture in Korea may seem a sexual advance to the American's eyes. As for flattery, frequently used by a successful Korean salesperson, it seems to be insincere and untruthful to foreign visitors. Considering these cultural differences, there might be a head-on collision when a Korean salesperson and an American customer meet face to face.