Posts by Zia Daniell Wigder (bio)

Zia Daniell Wigder | May 09, 2008, 10:01 AM
Maintaining an advantage in global customer care

Our global online retail report, which will be published next week, ended up so long that we decided to spin off a couple of topics into separate reports. One of these topics is global customer care. Many US-based companies look at the global landscape and balk at having to support multiple customer service channels in multiple languages. As a result, both support channels and languages are often sacrificed outside of the US to try and keep costs in check.

A handful of companies are getting creative to maintain multi-language support. In a conversation with eGain’s CEO Ashu Roy earlier this week, for example, he indicated that some multi-channel merchants in international markets have turned to their local employees to assist with customer service requests. These employees are obviously well versed in the local language, as well as aware of local customer preferences and resources. As companies expand into markets where there may be multiple languages or dialects spoken, not all of which are supported through traditional customer care channels, such a strategy can help fill in the gaps.

Indeed, while there are certainly areas where companies can contain costs in international markets (and the report will help identify these areas), companies must ensure they don’t miss out on an opportunity to differentiate based on customer care. US-based companies are often taken to task for their missteps in global markets; by contrast, there is often a perception that these companies provide superior customer care. In our report, we outline how US companies can take advantage of their expertise in customer service, and identify which tools and options can help them build a leadership position in customer care outside of the US.

Zia Daniell Wigder | May 02, 2008, 10:17 AM
Keeping up with localization

In the past couple of months, the topic of localization seems to have been everywhere. In March, both McKinsey and BCG tackled this issue in their publications: The McKinsey Quarterly addressed the central-local debate in global staffing in The multilocal challenge: Managing cross-border functions while the Boston Consulting Group issued a report on The BCG 50 Local Dynamos which looks at how nimble local companies in emerging markets have staved off competition from multinational corporations.

Daily publications, too, are addressing this issue in great number. In the past few days alone, the UK-based Times Online published an article citing Club Penguin’s localization strategy while The Wall Street Journal’s Marketplace section featured a front-page look at Kraft’s localization of Oreos for the Chinese market (the story was subsequently picked up as a feature on Yahoo!). CNET covered the launch of a new localized Twitter Japan.

Asian-based publications are also eagerly following localization: ChinaDaily, for example, published a story yesterday on the successful localization strategies of Chinese appliance manufacturer Haier. In India, The Economic Times recently covered the trend of retailers localizing by region within India rather than trying to create products with nationwide appeal.

Localization is a topic that’s only becoming more important to global companies; don’t expect coverage to wane any time in the near future.

Zia Daniell Wigder | April 25, 2008, 11:51 AM
Predicting US online retailers’ global expansion

One question I’ve asked US online retailers expanding internationally is how they prioritize their global site launches. Some of the factors cited most frequently include:

- Size of e-commerce market
- Regulatory environment
- Existing operations in-country
- Use of English language
- Internet penetration
- Broadband penetration
- Potential to repurpose foreign-language content

To determine which factors are having the greatest impact on decisions, I’ve spent some time mapping online retailers’ global transactional sites to a variety of different metrics. Overall, there’s no single factor driving their expansion route, but some clearly play a greater role than others.

Common language. Canada and the UK figure highly among US online retailers’ global sites; in the case of Canada, it's far beyond its relative market size. While Canada certainly comes with non-English language regulations and challenges, retailers often cite the use of English as a key factor in their Canadian expansion. And in Europe, US-based online retailers almost always target the UK as their first market.

E-commerce market size. For US online retailers expanding into Europe, market size tends to trump the leveraging of local-language content or overall Internet penetration levels. US online retailers are more likely to expand into the relatively larger markets of UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – all of which mandate different languages - than to expand into one or two in this group and then leverage their local-language content across borders into smaller countries (eg Austria, Switzerland). Similarly, Internet and broadband penetration, while cited as an important factor to many companies, hasn’t driven most US online retailers to the Internet- and broadband-intensive areas of the smaller northern European countries.

Broader trade relations. Neither a common language nor e-commerce market size completely captures US companies’ focus on their NAFTA partners, however. Online investment in Canada and Mexico incorporates geographic proximity, trade agreements and companies’ existing relationships within these countries. Indeed, one metric that does capture some of the dynamics of US retailers’ online expansion route (and includes the regulatory issues and existing in-country operations mentioned above) is the top export markets for US companies overall. As demonstrated in the graphic below, every one of the top 10 export countries is served by at least three of Internet Retailer’s top 10 US-based online retailers. As the US’ largest trading partner, Canada is served by nine. The list also reflects US online retailers’ interest in Mexico, although the country is arguably underserved given that transactional sites are operated by less than half of the top 10 online retailers.

More on this topic – and how companies should be assessing different international markets – to come in our research.

Zia Daniell Wigder | April 17, 2008, 08:31 AM
Finishing up global online retail

I’m in the midst of concluding a long series of interviews with US and European retailers, as well as e-commerce vendors, logistics and customer service providers, payment enablers, freight forwarders and other parties involved in helping online retailers expand overseas. It’s all going into a report on global online retail that will be coming out soon.

The report will contain information on which global markets are gaining the most traction among US-based online retailers, how retailers should be staffing their global initiatives and which vendors are best positioning themselves to help online retailers with their international expansion. It’ll also include international best practices when it comes to areas such as customer service and payments.

This is an area we’ll continue to cover in detail going forward: if you’re a company with an offering in the global online retail space, we’d love to hear from you.

Zia Daniell Wigder | April 04, 2008, 12:23 PM
US online diversity increasing

A recurring theme in globalization discussions is the fact that the global online population is shifting rapidly, with the percentage of the total hailing from the US and Europe steadily declining. Indeed, within the next three years, the total number of online users in Asia is set to surpass the online population in the US and Europe combined.

At the same time, equally important for US marketers is the fact that the composition of the US online population is also shifting at a steady pace. Our recently released US Online Population Forecast shows the percentage of Hispanic online users increasing from 30 million online users this year to 37 million by 2013. An additional 5.5 million African-American households will come online during that time. Indeed, new users coming online during the next five years are over 40% more likely to be Hispanic or African-American than Caucasian.

Given the increasing diversity of the US population, it’s not surprising that marketers place multicultural marketing as one of the key issues for 2008. For many, it's already underway: a recent survey we conducted among Web site decision makers at large US companies showed Spanish to be by far the most popular translated language for their site content. While some of these translations are for the market in Spain and Latin America, many have been targeted the US Hispanic market.**

Those companies that aren’t considering how the increasingly diverse online population will affect their businesses risk losing out to their more forward-thinking competitors that have already begun to integrate these groups into their growth strategy. Indeed, marketers that haven’t given thought to the multicultural audience in the US will risk missing out on one-third of the online population within the next five years.

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** An interesting side note on Spanish translation: Lionbridge’s Zeitgeist 2007 summary, which tallies up all language translations the localization vendor did for clients around the globe in 2007, places Spanish for Spain as the most popular type of translated Spanish; Spanish for Latin America and the US were roughly tied in second place, followed by “International Spanish” and Spanish for Mexico. Rolled up, these different translations push Spanish to the #1 position on Lionbridge’s list. By contrast, Spanish is outpaced by Canadian French on competitor SDL’s 2007 list of world languages.

Zia Daniell Wigder | March 28, 2008, 08:45 AM
Going international one country at a time

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a series of conversations with online retailers expanding outside of their home markets, as well as with vendors assisting with this international expansion. One issue we've discussed is how quickly online retailers are rolling out offerings in new markets, and whether these companies are expanding one country at a time or into several countries simultaneously (the latter being typified over the past year by UGC-oriented companies such as YouTube and MySpace that have launched new localized sites in tandem or in relatively short succession).

It's obvious that launching a retail site overseas entails far greater complexity (see previous blog post); it’s therefore not surprising that almost every company I’ve spoken with so far has elected the more guarded approach of single-country rollouts. Indeed, many of the retailers have chosen to focus on one market outside of North America - often the UK - for the first 1-2 years, then built on their experience to consider expansion into other markets.

This limited global expansion is not limited to the retail sector alone. In his book Redefining Global Strategy, Pankaj Ghemawat writes that,

“…managers seem surprised to learn that U.S. multinationals typically operate in just one or two foreign countries and that for those that operate in just one, there is a 60 percent chance that this country is Canada.”

Indeed, if US multinationals overall are slow to launch internationally, retailers are unlikely candidates to lead in rapid global expansion. Companies such as those in the media or travel sector that don’t face online retailers’ logistical issues are often better poised to engage in simultaneous, multi-country launches; those that simply translate frameworks for UGC creation are in an even more advantageous position.

Retailers will rightly take a measured approach and view each new market as providing unique opportunities, but also a complex set of hurdles to be understood prior to market entry.

Zia Daniell Wigder | March 18, 2008, 11:01 AM
Growth in global ad spending

Carat issued a release yesterday with their projections for total advertising growth around the globe. Though many growth rates have been revised down slightly from previous forecasts, they remain bullish on online advertising growth, particularly in several developing markets. They project that the online advertising markets in China and Russia, for example, will grow by 56% and 46% respectively in 2008. Jupiter forecasts the US online ad market to grow by just 15% during that same time period.

A look a global growth rates might suggest that developing markets are poised to overtake today's major online markets, just as China made headlines recently by announcing they were about to surpass the US in total Internet users. As with online retail spending, however, online advertising spending in China is growing rapidly but still remains small as compared to markets in the US and Europe.

Projections of China’s online advertising market in 2008 can range by $1 billion, usually falling between $800 million and $1.8 billion. Even the higher estimate puts China’s online market at just 12% of the European one and 8% of the market in the US (the lower estimates halve those figures). Russia’s online advertising market remains smaller still, comprising just 1-2% of the European or American market.

Obviously high growth rates for these online markets means they will become significant global forces, and ones that should be on many companies’ radar screens longer term. For now, however, the relative size of the markets should be taken into consideration alongside growth rates.

We’ll be looking at some of these issues in an upcoming report on Prioritizing Market Entry. The report will help companies come up with a short- and long-term priority list based on the unique factors in major online markets around the globe.

Zia Daniell Wigder | March 14, 2008, 11:56 AM
Courting young, Chinese urban professionals

An interesting article came out in the March issue of STORES magazine on Chinese consumers’ purchase of US goods online. The article focuses on Alipay, a PayPal-like provider that boasts 56 million users in China (some one-quarter to one-third of the total online population). Alipay’s services enable its users to purchase from foreign retailers. According to the article,

“Alipay and [partner] PSP are targeting Chinese Urban Professionals. “Chuppies” are Internet savvy, love American goods and have disposable income.”

Indeed, while per capita income in China remains low - estimated to be around $6,000 per year in urban areas - spending patterns of young professionals differ from those in the US. US News & World Report put it this way:

“An urban "young white-collar" worker [in China] who earns as little as 5,000 yuan (about $625) a month typically still lives and eats with his parents and so may have almost 100 percent disposable income. It isn't uncommon for this demographic to save for months to buy a brand-name handbag or pair of sneakers for hundreds of dollars.”

Yet despite growing incomes and interest in US goods, expectations of the current Chinese online retail market should be kept in check: Consumer e-commerce in China remains a fraction of that in major global online markets. Estimates vary, but tend to put the B2C online retail market in China around $4 billion in 2007. That’s roughly one-tenth of the comparable Japanese market and just 3-4% of the market in the US.

Still, online spending in China is growing rapidly, as is interest in shopping from US sites. And it’s not just iconic American items that are attracting the Chinese consumer. In addition to athletic shoes and blue jeans, a 2006 study indicated the list of items Chinese consumers would like to buy from US companies also included DVDs, washer-dryers and moisturizer.

Zia Daniell Wigder | March 03, 2008, 12:13 PM
Facebook now offers German

In addition to offering a Spanish-language version of its site, Facebook just launched in German. A French-language version is said to be in the works. That a German version arrived in advance of a French one is somewhat surprising: the company has more users in France than in Germany, and certainly more in French-speaking areas of the world altogether than German-speaking ones. Indeed, there were fewer Facebook users in Germany than in several other non-English speaking countries including Turkey, France, Sweden and Norway.

Though the speed of the community-based German translations may have prompted the quick rollout - the company indicated it took users less than two weeks to translate the content - there are several reasons why a German-language launch should be a priority.

First, Facebook’s current lack of a German audience suggests there’s room for improvement in its German strategy; a native-language rollout is an obvious first step toward attracting more users. Facebook is competing with numerous existing German services including StudiVZ, Lokalisten and Kwick.de, as well as MySpace and others that have translated their content into German. With German users’ strong preference for networking in their own language, a German-language version is essential.

Second, Germany accounts for approximately one-quarter of all online ad and retail spending in Western Europe; it’s the second largest market in Europe for both after the UK. Lionbridge’s Zeitgeist tool, which provides a snapshot of the localization vendor’s translations, places German a close second to French in 2007 (Spanish for Spain, Latin America and the US are all listed separately, resulting in lower individual rankings).

Finally, although Germany offers a robust online marketplace, current participation in social networking lags behind other European countries: just 10 percent of Germans visit social networking sites weekly or more often. Social networking providers are thus viewing the German marketplace as one with enormous potential growth.

Stay tuned for more research by my colleagues Nate Elliott and Nick Thomas on the evolving social networking landscape in Europe.

Zia Daniell Wigder | February 29, 2008, 10:32 AM
New global UGC report posted

Our international user-generated content report is now up on the site. The report looks at how companies are tackling the issue of translation when it comes to blogs, consumer reviews, social networking and other kinds of UGC, and recommends translation strategies for different types of companies.

I’ll be discussing the topic of global UGC in greater depth at both ad:tech Miami and well as Localization World in Berlin.

Zia Daniell Wigder | February 27, 2008, 01:56 PM
Global youth in the US

I ran one of my videoconferences this past Monday between young women in Tunisia and New York: the topic this week was the media. There were sophisticated discussions about balanced news coverage and freedom of speech, as well as lighter conversations on reality TV and social networking.

Interestingly, all the Tunisian participants read and listened to US-based news sources on a regular basis (most had a preferred candidate in our presidential elections); equally interesting was that the American participants were also regular consumers of news sources outside of their own country.

It’s tempting to write off these news habits as atypical since our participants are all full-time students of international affairs, yet what’s surprising is that their behavior not that unique. Indeed, among both 18-24 year-olds and 25-34 year-olds in the US, some 21 percent had consulted English-language online news from other countries monthly or more frequently. Seven and eight percent respectively had consumed English-language online entertainment from other parts of the world. Foreign-language content consumption was lower but not insignificant.

Interest beyond US borders is not limited to adults, either. Though not as global as their young adult counterparts, over 12 percent of online teens are now consuming content from outside of the US on a regular basis. US teens may have been maligned recently over their lack of knowledge of literature or history, yet a number are branching out beyond their borders when it comes to their online activities. And unlike the adult globaphiles, these teen globaphiles do not skew male: they’re evenly split between girls and boys.

For a more in-depth look at the evolving global teen marketplace, stay tuned for our upcoming report on this topic.

Zia Daniell Wigder | February 12, 2008, 12:01 PM
Off to North Africa

I’ll be away through the end of next week, so blogging will be slow. First up is a trip to meet the participants in our current videoconferencing program in Gabes, Tunisia. We have a wonderful group of young women participating – it just takes a while to reach Gabes (5 hours by shared cab from Tunis). We’ll also be attempting to troubleshoot some of the technology problems we’ve had lately in trying to link our IP-based videoconferencing system in New York with an ISDN version in Gabes.

After that it’s a week of relaxation in France. I don’t expect to be online much while I’m there – regular blogging will resume the week of 2/25.

In the meantime, a snapshot of our Tunisian participants during a recent videoconference in New York.

Zia Daniell Wigder | February 08, 2008, 11:54 AM
Spanish-language Facebook

Yesterday Facebook launched its first non-English language version in Spanish. Though buried within the user's account section (US-based Facebook members must know to click on account, then language, then select “Spanish” from a dropdown menu), users from Spanish-speaking countries will receive the Spanish-language version by default. Facebook claims 1,500 users helped participate in the Spanish translations, while translations for the French- and German-speaking markets are underway.

While it’s not surprising that Facebook chose Spanish as its first language – it’s the third most commonly spoken language by the online population after English and Chinese, and we found it to be the most popular language for US website translations – Facebook’s much publicized decision to rely on a community-based translation model (“crowdsourcing”) is less typical.

Crowdsourcing has garnered much attention in the translation space: Jeff Howe, the Wired reporter who coined the term crowdsourcing, keynoted the Localization World conference last fall. Yet crowdsourcing hasn’t yet been deployed on a wide scale basis. Indeed, the need for a loyal, committed and perhaps most important, skilled base of translators means the crowdsourcing model is going to be effective for only a small number of companies aiming to translate their content.

Facebook presents a confluence of factors that make crowdsourcing a viable model for translation: it has a large and rapidly growing user base (64 million active users), as well as a highly global one (60 percent reside outside the US). Though many of its global users hail from the English-speaking world, it still boasts a substantial number from other regions: almost 3 million from Spanish-speaking countries, for example.

Additionally, Facebook’s users tend to spend a significant amount of time on the site: in December 2007, Hitwise put the average visit on Facebook at 19 minutes, 51 seconds. By contrast, earlier in 2007 Hitwise asserted that the average time spent on broadcast media sites was 7 minutes, 5 seconds and on print media sites was 7 minutes, 6 seconds. Facebook users are spending a good amount of time on the site each time they visit, and may therefore be more likely to spend time assisting with translations.

Facebook is not alone in finding success in the crowdsourcing model: dotSUB, an enabler of community-based translations for online video, highlights the success of community-based translations in a corporate video made by Mittal Steel, for example. Yet companies must be realistic about the commitment and skill set of their user base.

Crowdsourcing is topic that’s coming up with some frequency in my conversations with US-based companies and organizations considering translations, particularly in relation to user-generated content. Indeed, for more information on crowdsourcing and UGC (as well as other translation options for companies that do not have Facebook’s user base), stay tuned for our upcoming report on this topic.

Zia Daniell Wigder | February 01, 2008, 10:08 AM
US online retailers’ cautious global expansion

I’d intended to provide more detail on our Shop.org panels, but two articles in Internet Retailer and RIS this week did a good job of summing up some of the key issues we addressed.

Instead, I wanted to make a couple of comments on US retailers and their moves into global markets. I’m often asked why there aren’t more US online retailers with extensive international offerings. Amazon, for example, considered a leader in its global efforts, has just six international sites; one is in Canada.

Yet stepping back for a moment, it’s not surprising that many US retailers have focused exclusively on the domestic market. The US online retail market is set to represent $130 billion this year, roughly on par with all of the Western European markets combined. While the largest markets in Europe certainly represent a significant percentage of the total - not quite the 80/20 rule, but close - it’s still not unexpected that most US online retailers have focused on their home market. Translation and localization can be pricey propositions, and overseas expansion for online retailers comes with logistical issues (global warehousing, for example) that companies in other sectors such as online media don’t have to address.

Over the next five years, however, the US market will not remain in the same dominant position it’s in now. The percentage of the global online population that hails from the US will decline; in Asia, it will increase by several percentage points. European online retail markets will grow more quickly than the comparable market in the US; those in Asia will grow even faster.

Companies in the US have certainly been successful in tapping into international markets over the years. Over half of Interbrand’s Best Global Brands, for example, hail from the US - companies must derive at least a third of their revenues outside of their home markets to even qualify for consideration on the list.

Online retailers will move more aggressively into non-US markets going forward. Their somewhat cautious moves to date, however, are understandable.

Zia Daniell Wigder | January 25, 2008, 11:07 AM
Broad international themes from Shop.org

I just arrived back from the Shop.org Strategy and Innovation Forum in Orlando. This is the third Shop.org event I’ve attended over the past couple of years – it’s been a lot of fun to see global topics starting to play a key role in this online retail conference. The first Shop.org conference I attended in 2006 had no dedicated international panels; the Annual Summit in September 2007 had one clinic on European marketing; this time a half-day on the "Growth Strategies" (vs. the "Innovation") track was devoted to international topics.

I moderated two international panels, one on high-level, strategic issues (when and where to go global) and one on more tactical issues (how to go about it and what pitfalls to avoid). We had fantastic panelists: Soren Mills from Walmart.com, Troy Brown and Rolf Schultz from Timberland and Peter Cobbs from eBags.

I’ll dive into some of the specific recommendations that came out of the panels on the blog next week, but in the meantime, here are some broad international themes that emerged from the event, both from our panel as well as from conversations with attendees:

We’re still in the early stages. While a handful of big retailers are deriving substantial revenues from overseas - Walmart is now deriving around a quarter of total revenues outside of the US - the majority of attendees I spoke with at the conference were at the early stages of international expansion. Several companies, for example, were debating the value of expanding from the US into Canada as a first step into international markets. And most of the questions from the audience during our panel were from retailers who were debating an international rollout rather than from those who had already expanded into multiple different countries.

International is a great opportunity, but proceed cautiously. The retailers on the panel were very excited by the prospects that international affords, but also stressed the need to conduct solid due diligence and to execute with a thorough, well thought-out business strategy. Each country comes with a unique set of regulatory and logistical hurdles, not to mention a different set of consumer expectations. Timberland, for example, highlighted the fact that British consumers have high expectations of online retailers, and will be vocal about any lapses they perceive in performance. Other companies at the conference such as Anthropologie are testing international waters not by launching international sites, but by shipping overseas and offering payments in multiple currencies through global payments enabler E4X.

Be in for the long haul. International markets are not for the faint of heart, for those who are unwilling to make a substantial investment, or for those looking for short-term ROI. Peter Cobb of eBags advised the audience that it may take 3-4 years to become profitable in international markets. That being said, all companies on the panel viewed international as a critical part of their growth strategy, and one they were highly committed to.

Zia Daniell Wigder | January 18, 2008, 11:10 AM
First Web Globalization report of the year

We’ve just published our vision report on Web Site Localization: Best Practices in Global Expansion. In addition to discussing the global online landscape (and explaining how it’s shifting), the report looks at how companies are taking their sites global, and outlines what steps companies need to take to prepare for long-term success in international markets. It also provides a half dozen different case studies of best practices in web site localization.

Clients can view the report here.

Zia Daniell Wigder | January 11, 2008, 11:19 AM
Foreign-language news for English speakers

While enrollment in foreign language courses at American colleges is indeed increasing, today just 10 percent of those born in the US speak a language other than English (the figure is 20 percent for the overall US population; the British fair slightly better at 30 percent). Native English speakers are thus largely reliant on English-language news sources: just three percent of online consumers in the US, for example, indicated they access a foreign-language news source monthly.

An increasing number of sources have emerged to try and make non-English language news more accessible to the English-speaking world. A print publication that was popular back in my grad school days, World Press Review, has since ceased its print publication, launching an online edition to translate the “best of the international press” from 20 different languages. And last year Language Weaver introduced Kontrib, a Digg-like site using the company’s statistical machine translation software to translate articles from global sources (interestingly, both Google and Yahoo offer their own automated “Translate this page” options next to non-English language Web search results, yet neither company offers this option on their news searches).

More recent initiatives have used community-based translations to bring non-English language news to the English speaking world. Harvard Law School-founded Global Voices, for example, has a global network of contributors who identify and translate news from around the world.

Not all initiatives are destined for success. UK-based Blognation, for example, which sought to have in-country native speakers write in English about Web 2.0 developments around the globe, shut down at the end the year due to a lack of funding. Indeed, making foreign-language news accessible to the English-speaking audience is only part of the battle; cultivating interest in the news presents an equal if not greater challenge.

Zia Daniell Wigder | January 04, 2008, 07:07 AM
Global green branding

This past holiday season has brought much attention to the issue of green marketing, with several studies pointing to the growing number of US consumers who made purchase decisions based on environmental concerns. Companies are scrambling to highlight their green initiatives in hopes of attracting the increasingly aware American consumer.

While green marketing has recently become a hot topic in the US, it’s well known that many companies outside of the US have been thinking about this issue for years. Some European countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, for example, have had environmental labeling on their products for decades (the first article I ever published was on this topic back in 1990). It’s not surprising that many leading green corporate initiatives have come from European companies; European consumers are still believed to be more environmentally aware than their American counterparts.

The environment is also becoming an increasingly important issue in Asia. In addition to the attention this topic has garnered in China with the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing, other countries are zeroing in on the environmental topic. In Japan, a recent study by ad agency Hakuhodo found that those concerned about environmental issues increased from 49 to 64 percent during the past year, while those interested in global warming issues jumped from 81 percent to 93 percent. Other countries such as South Korea that have been perceived as lagging in the environmental area are now starting to turn their attention to the issue.

Just as US companies are now starting to understand the need for environmental initiatives in their home market, so, too, should they be considering and highlighting their environmental initiatives in a global context (see GE’s international sites for an example). As with companies’ broader international strategies, however, there is a strong need to understand consumer behavior on a country level.

For example, in Europe, over a quarter of European online shoppers would pay more for green products, or would be influenced by a company's environmental policy. Yet on a country-by-country basis, the percentages vary greatly. In Denmark, some 58 percent of online consumers said they’d pay more for environmentally friendly products; in Germany, this figure was just 14 percent. Similar skews exist in the percentages of those consumers influenced by corporate environmental policies (for a more in-depth look at this topic, see my colleague Dorothee Vogel’s recent report on European Green Consumers).

Green marketing, highlighted as the “trendiest marketing buzzword” for US marketers in 2008, should be part of a global as well as a domestic strategy. Marketers must, however, bear in mind that user attitudes and behavior will vary greatly by country, and adjust both their offerings and expectations accordingly.

Zia Daniell Wigder | December 20, 2007, 10:58 AM
Machine Translation and User-Generated Content

There have been numerous comparisons of different machine translation (MT) services – today’s assessment in the Wall Street Journal was of particular interest to me as it compared the Arabic capabilities of four MT providers: Google, Applied Language, WorldLingo and Systran. Since much of my free time is devoted to organizing interactive dialogues with the Middle East, I’ve been actively following the evolution of Arabic translation tools, especially as an increasing number of MT providers have tackled this language (by contrast, I’m still waiting for a free Farsi-to-English translator).

The WSJ article comes to the same conclusion as many other assessments: the tools can be helpful, but clearly aren’t ready for prime time. Indeed, in conversations I’ve had with companies about the use of MT for interactive dialogue, they’ve all highlighted this area as one of MT’s weakest: the colloquialisms used in dialogue and disjointed nature of most conversations make it almost impossible to apply MT, which performs best with highly structured text.

MT’s poor performance when it comes to unstructured text means this option may not yet suffice for global companies hoping to use MT to translate large volumes of user-generated content (UGC). Companies are aware that UGC is an increasingly valuable tool: over a third of all online users find ratings and reviews from other consumers helpful during online shopping, for example. Yet to translate a large volume of content through professional translators is prohibitively expensive, particularly when the precise ROI of user-generated content remains unclear.

Companies aiming to expand their UGC offerings into new international markets are therefore facing a variety of different options, none of which provide a silver bullet. They can roll out a framework for international UGC to develop organically, much in the way YouTube did in Europe – such an option relies on having (or building rapidly) an engaged base of users ready to contribute content in every market. Other companies have experimented with translating a handful of consumer entries professionally to seed new international offerings with content. Still others are eyeing community-based translations as an alternative to pricey professional versions.

Our first report of 2008 will address this issue of user-generated content in international markets: the report will help companies determine which strategies make the most sense given the particular nature of their content.

Until then, happy holidays and best wishes for a wonderful new year!

Zia Daniell Wigder | December 04, 2007, 11:03 AM
Social networking and the Chinese market

My colleagues have written extensively on the topic of social networking in Europe, from Nick’s recent report to Nate’s coverage in his blog.

Outside of Europe, there’s been considerable speculation about the major players’ international expansion: MySpace made its foray into Asia with a Japanese launch at the end of 2006 and with MySpace China in April of this year. Today’s announcement that Li Ka-shing has acquired a small stake in Facebook has fueled rumors that Facebook could again be inching closer to an entry into the Chinese market (rumors last month suggested Facebook was considering acquiring Chinese social networking site Zhanzuo, but have been denied by the company).

That China is of critical interest to major social networking sites is no surprise: in recent conversations with US companies expanding overseas, China consistently topped the list of non-European markets of greatest interest to them. And recent studies have touted the digital self-expression of Chinese youth and the collaborative nature of the Internet in China, characteristics that render this market particularly attractive to social networking companies.

While China is of great interest to companies expanding internationally (and is set to rival the US in total Internet users within five years), this interest has not necessarily translated into action. Few companies have begun to target the Chinese market with social media: Intel, for example, was lauded earlier this year for launching one of the first US business blogs in Chinese. And in our recent survey of website decision makers, Chinese fell well below several of the European languages and behind Japanese when it comes to the languages major US companies are addressing with their websites. The list of languages US companies are offering on their sites does not reflect the global base of online users; it especially does not reflect how this base of users is changing.

It’s not surprising that translations have mirrored the companies’ international expansion – namely into Europe first – and that market entry into China comes with an entirely different level of complexity and concerns. Yet with all the interest in China, companies that aren’t preparing to translate and localize for this market will find themselves falling behind more nimble competitors who are equally interested in tapping into this rapidly evolving marketplace.

Zia Daniell Wigder | November 28, 2007, 12:17 PM
Changing demographics of the US population

We’re getting an increasing number of questions about the multicultural US market, which means I spend a good amount of time pouring over US Census data. While the next official census won’t be conducted until 2010, the American Community Survey is conducted every year to “fill in the gaps between each 10 year census”.

Below are a few high-level takeaways on the US population (ages 5+) from the 2006 survey, released a couple of months ago:

- Percentage of US population speaking a language other than English at home: 20% (figure in 2000: 18%)
- Percentage of US population speaking English “less than very well”: 9%

- Percentage of US population that is foreign born: 13% (figure in 2000: 11%)
- Percentage of foreign-born population speaking only English: 16%
- Percentage of native-born population speaking only English: 90%

- Percentage of US population speaking Spanish at home: 12% (figure in 2000: 10%)
- Percentage of Spanish speakers that are native born: 49%
- Percentage of native-born Spanish speakers speaking English “very well”: 79%
- Percentage of foreign-born Spanish speakers speaking English “very well”: 27%

Languages that over one million people in the US speak at home, in declining order: Spanish, Chinese, French, Tagalog, Indic languages (including Hindi and Gujarathi), German, Vietnamese and Korean.

More stats from the survey available through this link.

Zia Daniell Wigder | November 16, 2007, 11:23 AM
Localization and the US Hispanic retail market

This week Best Buy rolled out a new Spanish-language transactional site targeted at the US Hispanic marketplace. The company previously offered a Spanish-language version of the site, but according to the release, the new site “allows Hispanic customers to browse, research, compare products, check out, and receive an order confirmation in their preferred language”.

Best Buy's Spanish-language site is a translated version of the original English-language site rather than a fully localized offering. The music link, for example, takes both English- and Spanish-speaking audiences to the same featured CDs. The same is true for DVDs. In both cases, the Spanish-language site gives the headlines of featured listings in Spanish, but leaves the product descriptions below in English.

By contrast, other retailers such as Amazon have taken a more aggressive approach to localization; the company offers a Spanish-language version of its books section for the US Hispanic market. Amazon offers unique content for this market and provides most links in Spanish. The search function defaults to Spanish-language books. Amazon has one of the more extensive localized offerings, however; Best Buy’s Spanish-language site puts it ahead of competitors such as Wal-Mart and Circuit City who do not (yet) offer sites targeted at the US Hispanic marketplace.

For Best Buy, a next step in localization offering is likely to be identifying specific content for the US Hispanic market; additional localization should also take into consideration user behavior. For example, Best Buy could highlight their cell phones and digital music offerings prominently, as our research shows that Hispanics strongly overindex on purchases of these two categories online.

With online retail spending by Hispanics in the US topping $20 billion by 2011, look to see an increasing number of retailers eyeing not only translations, but also increasing localization for this market.

Zia Daniell Wigder | November 05, 2007, 10:03 AM
A common language will only get you so far

An article in the WSJ today, “Plain English Gets Harder in Global Era”, highlights the cultural challenges of globalization. Though an increasing number of people around the globe are learning and communicating in English, a common language does not alleviate differences such as senses of humor and cultural sensitivities. The article highlights examples such as:

“[A] British manager openly discussed mistakes made by team members -- to the chagrin of colleagues in France, who thought such public criticism inappropriate.”

“The Estonians would respond better to a more forceful and authoritarian style than was common in Sweden. He advised his client to change phrases like "it is good" to "it is vitally important."

This issue of localization – adapting to a specific language, country or culture by taking into account nuances such as local terminology and consumer behavior – goes beyond just understanding foreign colleagues; it’s equally important when launching an international offering. Indeed, localization is a topic we discuss here extensively, as a lack of localization is one of the biggest mistakes companies are making today when expanding abroad.

I’m working on an international search report and have heard a number of interesting anecdotes about dollars being left on the table - or funds being misspent - by search marketers failing to take into account cultural nuances and local habits (clients, stay tuned for the report by month end). US marketers tend to focus their time and energy on language translation when entering foreign markets; while language translation is certainly important, it’s but a first step in launching a successful overseas offering.

Zia Daniell Wigder | October 31, 2007, 10:54 AM
AOL's new international initiatives

AOL today announced the launch of two new foreign-language versions of its portal for the Indian market – the company will be launching AOL in both Hindi and Tamil. AOL comes somewhat late to the game, however, as MSN already offers five Indic language versions of its site and Yahoo seven. Google is available in five.

What was more interesting about today’s announcement from AOL was the fact that they’re prioritizing video in international markets. Truveo, AOL’s video search engine, is now available in localized versions for eight European and Asian markets, including India, Korea and Japan (the Indian version, incidentally, in English). By year-end, the goal is to be in 15 countries worldwide.

With interest in international content growing substantially (even in the US, some three million young adults access foreign-language online entertainment monthly; a similar number access foreign-language online news), and video being one of the fastest growing areas, it’s wise for any company aiming to be a global player to start translating and localizing broadly or risk being left behind savvier companies in the market.