Joseph P. Helgert, a professor of business and communications whose work led to a deeper understanding of Japanese business practice, died Friday, February 16, 2024, in Tempe, Arizona, from pancreatic cancer. He was 71.
A creative academic writer whose work was widely published in Japanese, Korean and English, Helgert wrote case studies of contemporary Japanese business in which case participants were the main characters in a unique short story introduction to the standard business case. He was able to place Japanese business practice into cultural context based on years of work, study and teaching in Japan.
A well-received contribution was his 2005 book, Comparing and Contrasting Marketing Assumptions and Advertising Strategies in Japan and the United States: Case Studies published by Edwin Mellen Press of Lewiston, New York.
Helgert wrote about his experiences as a supervisor of Japanese advertising in Tokyo for Motorola, an American electronics company that succeeded in breaking into the tightly controlled Japanese merchant semiconductor and telecommunications market. During the eighties, Japanese business acquisition and market domination filled the news and American
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