Internet Business Networking

1
Internet Business Networking

• Globalisation and Culture

2
Globalisation

• E-commerce provides a global marketplace,
  therefore is important to focus on access usage
  from different geographic levels
• Worldwide
• Between continents countries

3
Cultural Factors

• The move towards international trading in a
  single global marketplace
• Blurring between social and cultural differences
  between countries
• Need to consider
• Strength of economy
• Political stability
• Taxation polices
• Language
• Attitude toward online purchasing

4
Essentials to Compete in Global Marketplace

• Quelch Klien (1996) indicate organisations must
  have
• A 24 hour order taking customer service
  response capability
• Regulatory customs-handling experience to ship
  internationally
• In-depth understanding of foreign marketing
  environments to assess the advantages of its own
  products services.

5
Issues to Compete in Global Marketplace

• Entering into new global marketplace
• Removing languages barriers
• Creating right site for audience
• Distributing product world-wide
• Offering 24/7 operations

6
Cultural Considerations

• Localisation what are trends of e-commerce
  sales in different countries
• Languages multilingual site? costs v
  advantages of this provision
• Demographics who is buying service products?
• Fulfilment distribution how to distribute
  goods, taxes etc.
• Testing establishing distribution channels

7
Global Business Needs

• How it addresses world markets
• Languages needed
• How to customise site for each country
• How do products services fit within global
  economy
• Will need to provide different products
  advertising for different countries
• How will business support expansion to global
  economy

8
Global Business Needs contd.

• Distribution channels access, import/export
  taxes, corrections, timing
• Global trends
• Trading partners
• Translation services

9
Company Success in Local Market

• Need to have global web strategy for local
  markets?
• Need to cater to differences in consumer
• Needs
• Preferences
• Cultural conventions
• Shopping habits of respective target audience
• Should International companies address meet needs
  tastes of local web communities by linking to a
  national or regional website that is locally
  managed?

10
Global Taxation

• US made largely tax free area on Internet
• Laws on taxation rapidly evolving
• EU directive intends to deal with taxation issued
  by defining place of establishment of a merchant
  as being where they pursue an economic activity
  from a fixed physical location

11
Problems of Managing Corporate Websites
Effectively

• Similar problems to globalising a company
• Update weekly?
• Need ability to communicate and manage
  information across borders

12
Technical Level

• On technical level
• global companies are pushing use of web
  globalisation technology to implement global web
  infrastructure
• designed to accelerate the localisation process
  provide platform for managing streamlining
  content development release
• cost-efficiency of this?
• Enables company to provide consistent content
  globally while providing localised content where
  required
• Capacity to fill needs of local markets while
  maintaining a corporate brand image

13
Cultural Issues Problems

• Differing cultural conventions
• Attitudes
• Experiences

14
Cultural Issues Problems contd.

• The following are implemented in different ways
  from 1 market to another
• Numerics
• Calendars dates
• Addresses
• Names
• Time
• Currency
• List separators
• Telephone numbers

15
Cultural Issues Problems contd.

• Examples
• America 07/04/97
• Germany 4.7.97
• Japan 97.7.4
• Use of name address on entry forms type last
  name on one line, first name on another
• Chinese Chang Wen Yuns family name Chang
  but this is his first name Is this what is
  being asked for?

16
Examples contd.

• Malaysia Isa bin Aman actually has only one
  name.
• In business world is called Mr Isa (Aman) is name
  of his father
• There is a need to consider how to deal with
  these different format conventions before
  localising product.

17
Cultural Bias

• Issues relating to
• Differences in dialect
• Appropriateness of product (company name)
• Culture specific references
• Values taboos
• Colour aesthetics
• Symbolism
• Body language
• Use of graphics

18
The Future

• Forrester Research estimates users 3 times more
  likely to buy over Internet when addressed in own
  language of target market
• Non-native English speakers 97 of world
  population
• How to overcome problems of language cultural
  understanding
• Political factors arising between places where
  there are differences between information haves
  have-nots
• Security
• Privacy
• Expensive Internet access
• Larger business rather than smaller business have
  resources to trade in global marketplace
• Westernisation seen as Americanisation
• As local language will become an increasingly
  important issue in the future as web becomes
  more popular among less well educated people
  English will no longer suffice as universal
  language for countries representing a smaller
  market!