Human resource policies involving hiring practices, performance appraisal and employee benefit that had been developed in the Netherlands were not necessarily well received by Royal Ahold's new managers and employees in Asia, Latin America, and South America. Likewise, because grocery shopping is a ritual significantly influenced by longstanding cultural norms across the globe, company officials found that customers in new markets often did not appreciate and sometimes flatly rejected the Dutch" way of organizing and managing a grocery store. These and related problems convinced Royal Ahold's executives that the best strategy to use in managing their foreign grocery chains was to allow most major decisions to be made by the management personnel of those chains who were typically retained following an acquisition.