This is an excerpt of the full article by Dr Nitish Singh, Associate Professor International Business & Director Program Innovations at the Boeing Inst. of International Business, St. Louis University and Co-organizer of Brand2Global, published on BrandQuarterly.com.
With the rise of the World Wide Web, we saw the emergence of e-commerce corporations. These e-commerce corporations included companies that were generally doing business online or through hybrid business models combining online and offline presence. Many traditional companies in the late 1990’s and in early 2000’s did not see these online e-commerce companies as threat, till online business models made some brick and mortar companies obsolete. That is the story which has repeated many times as evident in cases such as Borders, Blockbuster, and Barnes & Noble etc.
Now the new reality of e-commerce is global e-business expansion. Companies that do not take advantage of the inherent global nature of the web will be left behind. The Web allows companies to be global from day one. But the challenge for companies is to take advantage of this global connectivity to reach worldwide consumers. Some Avant-grade companies such as Amazon, eBay, Google, and Facebook have taken advantage of the web’s global connectivity, and have emerged as ‘Global online Multinationals’. However, many more companies due to the lack of expertise or vision have not been able to leverage their online presence across global markets.
The doctrine in the past decade was if you translate the website and digital media then they will come. But study after study has now shown that customers worldwide are not just looking for a website or digital media which is merely translated. The website or digital media needs to be well localized so as to resonate with its end user’s cultural and functional expectations. From a broad marketing perspective localization basically means adapting market offerings to best meet end user expectations.
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You can read the full article online here at BrandQuarterly.com
