On Tuesday 10th of March CITO representatives Linn Hantoft and Tommy Engqvist met up with the Service Manager Viktor Safar at Scania Korea. The meeting point was at Scania’s office in Seoul, South Korea. Scania is a Swedish manufacturer of trucks, buses and engines present all over the world. In South Korea their primary product lines are trucks, but engines are also part of their product portfolio.
Scania sold their first truck in South Korea already back in the 1960’s and opened their first representative office in 1985 and fully own subsidiary in 1995. Since then they have expanded and today they employ about 170 people both in offices and workshops around the country. Truck range offered in Korea was originally limited to mainly tippers, supporting booming construction segment that time, but expanded later to tractors, cargo trucks, special purpose vehicles as well as engines for marine and construction equipment applications.
Viktor describes some differences between the business situation in Europe and the one in South Korea and points out some important reasons for it. First of all, as a foreigner the language barrier can be troublesome when doing business in South Korea. Many people in South Korea does not speak English which as a foreigner mean you need to get help with translation in many business situations. Also the way of doing business is different between South Korea and Europe. The South Koreans wants to make business fast, usually they do not want to customize their truck like we do in Europe. Instead they go in and want to buy the truck directly and are eager to have the truck delivered right away, which represent some challenge for suppliers to always have sufficient stock of trucks of the correct specification. This is a major difference in how to do business for Scania in South Korea compared to Europe.
If you are interested in knowing more about Scania please visit www.scania.com.