Although the role of Guanxi in the Chinese business to business (B2B) market as a form of relationship marketing has received increasing attention in recent years, few empirical studies have explicitly distinguished between Guanxi and relationship marketing. Westerners typically consider Guanxi as unethical, but foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) may have some difficulty in fully practicing relationship marketing in China without considering the influence of Chinese culture. In this regard, this study is guided by the following research question: “In China, should foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) adopt Guanxi instead of relationship marketing in the B2B market?” In this study, we first provide an overview of previous research on Guanxi, focusing on the fundamental differences between Guanxi and relationship marketing. We then provide an empirical analysis of the differential effects of Guanxi and relationship marketing on firm performance by investigating 295 FIEs in the Chinese B2B market. The results suggest that Guanxi and relationship marketing are not trade-off options in today’s Chinese market. Guanxi and relationship marketing have synergetic effects on firm performance, that is, they have differential effects based on the mode of market entry and the type of competitor. Guanxi is more likely to influence firm performance for collaboration based entry firms rather than entry without collaboration firms, whereas relationship marketing is more likely to influence firm performance when FIEs’ main competitors are foreign firms than when they are local firms.

In the era of knowledge economy, with the accelerating pace of economic globalization, the Chinese market has begun to integrate with the international market, and the competition among countries has also begun to shift to the competition of knowledge and talents. Winning in the stage of market competition has also become a hot topic of concern for companies from all over the world in the process of development. The theory of corporate culture was only developed in the last century. As soon as the theory and concept of corporate culture appeared, it had attracted great attention from the Chinese market business community and related academic circles. Many scholars believe that corporate culture is an important entry to help companies improve their core competitiveness. At the same time as the construction of corporate culture, the marketing culture of the company has naturally become the top priority to promote the construction of corporate culture. In order to gain a firm foothold in the competitive arena of the era full of gunpowder smoke, enterprises should pay attention to the innovation of marketing strategies on the one hand, and on the other hand, they should also speed up the construction of corporate culture. A new approach is for the competitiveness of enterprises. South Korea is a friendly neighbor of China. The cultures of South Korea and China both originated from Confucian culture. However, due to the influence of folk customs, living background, national economic system, social and historical conditions and other factors in the development process of the two countries, the national culture In the process of development, there are still huge differences, and this cultural difference is reflected in the marketing management work and forms a different marketing culture. In recent years, with the further implementation of China’s opening-up policy, many Korean companies and companies from other Western countries have gradually entered the Chinese market, and the Chinese market has also entered the Korean market. However, how to further enhance the competitiveness of Chinese enterprises in the Korean market through marketing culture has also become an important issue that needs to be considered in promoting the development of multinational enterprises. This paper mainly analyzes the similarities and differences of the marketing culture of China and South Korea, and discusses the experience brought by the promotion of the construction of multinational enterprises after the comparative study of the marketing culture of the two countries, hoping to further promote the culture of Chinese multinational enterprises marketing development to provide reference advice.