Effects of cultural differences on non-european entrepreneurs while establishing a start-up company in sweden

Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to illustrate how cultural differences influence start-up companies established by young non-Europeans and how they overcome this. When immigrants want to start a business in a foreign country they have to overcome a number of challenges. One of the challenges is the difference in cultures between their country of origin and the country where they want to start their business. A culture includes what distinguishes members of one group of people from another. The differences in culture can have either positive or negative impacts on the entrepreneurial decisions of an immigrant entrepreneur.The data for this study was collected through exploratory qualitative method using inductive approach. The findings of this study suggest that the main driving forces behind immigrant entrepreneurs are either “pull” or “push” factors, like being pushed by the exiting circumstances for self-employment, fulfillment of one’s ambition, passion and being their own boss. The respondents of the study claimed that culture affects different aspects of their business, like development of promotional mix, marketing strategy, pricing strategy, language, product design to consumer level interaction.The important thing to bear in mind when an entrepreneur starts up their business in foreign land is how to tackle the cultural differences by learning to respect the other culture and their host language and by learning host countries language competitive advantage can arise.Keywords: Immigrant entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship, Cultural differences, Self-employment, start-up.