Wal-Mart: Taking Bad PR Global
While I realize that Wal-Mart is a lightning rod for publicity, both good and bad, I’m constantly amazed at just how poorly the company manages to avoid the bad variety. …
Business globalization
iTunes: Some Good News and Some Bad News
First, the bad news… According to the WSJ the EU is investigating whether iTunes overcharges UK customers. The price of a song in the UK is about 20% more than …
Lets Put Rest of World To Rest
Emerging markets are making the world a lot less easy to label In the old days of global commerce, before the Internet, an international marketing director could focus on a …
Borders Looks Beyond Borders
Greg Josefowicz, CEO of the Borders book chain, has looked into the future and he sees India. According to this article, the Ann Arbor-based chain is betting on international expansion …
eBay Launches Kijiji, Challenging Craigslist
eBay has launched of an international classified ads Web site called Kijiji, which the company says means “village” in Swahili. Kijiji is available for 50 cities in Canada, China, France, …
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Compete With ‘Em
The Journal writes about Hollywood’s strategy to (finally) begin discounting DVDs in China in an effort to be more competitive with the pirated DVDs. The discounted DVDs will still cost …
Getting to Know Global IA
I’m at the IA Summit in Montreal and have been pleased to find that IA (information architecture) professionals are tackling the challenges of content globalization in a big way. And …
Web Localization Into English
Because I spend the bulk of my time talking to US executives about expanding globally, my focus is typically on creating non-English Web sites. But Web globalization cuts both ways. …
Feed Pruning, or, The Zero-Sum Game of Blogging
I find it amazing how quickly a person can adopt a technology and, after having adopted it, grow impatient with it when it isn’t used to maximum effect. Take email …
GE Betting On Emerging Markets
I wrote about GE’s global growth plans in our February edition of Global By Design and I’m thrilled to see the Journal writing about it as well. GE expects to …
120 Million Internet Users In China in 2005
According to CNET, the MII, China’s equivalent to the US’ FCC, says that there will be 120 million Internet users in the China this year. That keeps them on track …
Hooters Goes Global
Could Hooters become the next Hard Rock Cafe? Judging by the pace at which it is spreading around the world, anything is possible. Believe it or not, there are now …
Levi’s Fatal Flaw
Levis has been losing money for eight years now; that has to be some sort of record. Fashion is fickle and there is very little Levis can do when the …
To Every Country A Sesame Street
According to the AP, a “Bengali version of the longrunning American children’s programme Sesame Street will be broadcast from April featuring Muppet characters drawn from Bangladeshi folklore.” Sesame Street is …
The World Is Getting Flatter
Tom Friedman’s much-anticipated new book, The World Is Flat is just around the corner and Zack Lynch offers a preview. Tom proposes that we are entering a third era of …