How can you understand a market without falling into cultural clichés?

Welcome to this series! Here we help you assess whether your business is prepared to enter francophone markets strategically and sustainably. Each article explores one of six essential question to help you decide if, when, and how to take your next international step.

In the first article of this series, we explored whether your brand has the operational maturity to expand internationally. If you passed that test, your next challenge is one that even global brands often underestimate:

How do you truly understand a market, its people, its business culture, and its expectations, without relying on clichés?

Understanding France and Québec takes more than translating your English messaging and hoping for the best. The two markets share a language, but the way they think, buy, evaluate risk, build trust and make decisions could not be more different. And this is exactly why stereotypes are dangerous.

1/ Clichés are cheap, but cultural misfires are expensive

Under pressure to move fast, it’s easy to slip into shortcuts:

“Make the French version sound more sophisticated, they love luxury.”
“Québec is basically North America, so just repurpose our US content in French.”

These shortcuts signal to your audience that you haven’t done your homework.

The result?

Campaigns that feel generic or tone-deaf
Sales cycles that stall for reasons you can’t explain
A brand that feels like a visitor rather than a local player

But the biggest cost of analyzing culture with stereotypes instead of evidence is that they blind you to the real business opportunity.

The biggest localization mistakes aren’t linguistic. They’re strategic. They happen when brands misunderstand how people make decisions, how they communicate, and how they interpret trust signals.

Before you adapt your value proposition (Article 3 in this series), you need a cultural foundation built on real insight, not assumptions.

So how do you get that insight?

2/ How to understand a market (for real)

Understanding a new culture requires a blend of qualitative depth and quantitative clarity. Here’s the approach we recommend at L2 Consulting:

Deep qualitative research: Understand the “Why”

Nothing replaces conversations with real people in your target market.

Local interviews or focus groups (10–15 people)
Talk to professionals or consumers who match your product or service. Uncover:

What makes a vendor look credible (or not)
What they expect from sales outreach
Which types of marketing messages they ignore—and why

Social listening & sentiment analysis
Monitor how people discuss:

Competitors
Industry trends
Pain points
Expectations

Pay close attention to tone and emotional cues. Is the discourse technical? Pragmatic? Relational? Critical? Optimistic?

These insights tell you far more than stereotypes ever could.

Observe local communication habits

Often, the unspoken rules shape success more than the obvious ones. Ask yourself:

How quickly do people reply to emails?
How formal are greetings, even in digital channels?
What role does humor play in marketing and sales?
How direct is feedback? How explicit are expectations?

For example:

France often values intellectual rigor, debate, and structured arguments.
Québec leans toward warmth, clarity, and a collaborative tone.

These aren't stereotypes, they’re observable communication norms.

Work with bicultural experts

Your localization partner cannot simply be a translator. You need someone who can explain:

why a sentence that’s “correct” can still be inappropriate or inadequate,
why a pitch that worked brilliantly in London will fall flat in Lyon,
why a perfectly acceptable US sales email will sound abrupt in Montréal.

Think of them as your cultural quality assurance layer. Without that layer, even sophisticated companies end up sounding foreign.

3/ Use frameworks to analyze, not to generalize

Cultural frameworks (Hofstede, Hall, Trompenaars…) are extremely useful, but only if you treat them as lenses, not as labels.

Good use:
“France scores high on Power Distance → this may affect how decisions flow in enterprises.”

Bad use:
“French companies are rigid and hierarchical.” (Not true and not helpful.)

What matters is understanding business behaviors, especially the ones that impact your sales cycle:

How fast decisions are made
Who signs off
How much data or proof is needed
How risk-averse buyers tend to be
What counts as a strong trust signal

These are the insights that shape your go-to-market strategy.

France vs Québec: similar language, different playbooks

One of the biggest traps in francophone expansion is assuming that France and Québec are interchangeable. They’re not.

France 🇫🇷

Business Structure
More centralized and debate-driven.
Expertise and credentials matter.

Communication Style
Formal, structured, logically rigorous.
Prefers well-constructed arguments and precise vocabulary.

Trust Signal
Demonstrated authority: expertise, rigor, track record.

→ Your sales pitch must show competence and intellectual depth. Formality is a sign of respect.

Image of a Paris street corner with a metro stop sign

Québec 🇨🇦

Business Structure
More horizontal, pragmatic, and collaborative. Authority comes from approachability and competence.

Communication Style
Friendly, plainspoken, and relatively informal. Values clarity and efficient action over long argumentation.

Trust Signal
Demonstrated sincerity: openness, human connection, transparency.

→ Tone matters as much as content. Your brand must feel accessible and relatable.