Marketing to Chuppies
UPS recently hired a Chinese market research firm to survey 1,200 “Chuppies” Chinese, urban, middle-class consumers. What they found is good news for American companies looking to expand into this …
Countries
eBay Tries to Expand Globally Without Offending Locally
eBay, despite doing business in more than 20 countries, still earns the bulk of its revenues from US sellers, folks who have been increasingly unhappy about steadily increasing listing fees. …
Chinese as a Second Language (Cont.)
According to Reuters, China is doing its part to help the world learn to speak its language. It just launched the Chinese-instruction Web site: Linese.com. It’s somewhat ironic that the …
Google Cashes Out of Baidu
Baidu is the “Google” of China with 51% of the market (according to CNNIC). Awhile back, Google bought a small chunk of the company, before it went public, presumably with …
McDonalds in China; Elle in the Middle East
The Wall Street Journal features two articles on business globalization and localization — from McDonald’s building drive-thrus in China to Elle publishiing a Middle East edition. For Elle, the challenge …
English, Chinese, and Hindi?
According to Silicon India Google CE Eric Schmidt says India will become the world’s biggest Internet market in 5 to 10 years. Says the article, “Schmidt’s other futurist view is …
China Expansion: UPS and Accor
UPS continues to invest heavily in China, announcing today that it was beginning flights from Germany to Shanghai and increasing the number of flights from the US to China. UPS …
Google Adwords in Emerging Markets
Adwords is Google’s revenue engine. Advertisers pay to be included on Google’s search engine results page as well as on targeted Web sites that host Google ads, ranging from personal …
China’s Translation Demand Curve
The Chinese blog Better Localization has an interesting story about a recent Chinese TV program that took a few multinationals to task (KLM and IKEA) for not providing Chinese-language documentation. …
Borders to Enter Middle East
While Amazon has done little on the Web globalization front over the past year, Borders has been slowly but steadily expanding its retail presence outside the US. it currently has …
Chinese as a Second Language
According to my local paper, Chinese language instruction is hot: “I tell you, this Chinese fever is on again,” Wong-Avery said. “Everyone knows it will be one of the most …
Is eBay Losing China?
According to Shanghai Daily eBay is dropping its fee for online stores, matching competitor Taobao.com‘s free offering. Says the article: Now why would eBay China do this? According to the …
China: We’re Number Four!
According to Business Week, China might soon revise GDP upwards by a whopping 20%. Says the article: That would make China the world’s fourth-largest economy, suddenly overtaking Italy, France, and …
China’s Evolving Cell Phone Culture
This is a great Wall Street Journal article on China’s culture and how it relates to technology — primarily voice mail. An excerpt: Many Chinese who have worked for inefficient, …
They’re Building A New DNS Mousetrap (But It’s Not Better)
The domain name system (DNS) was built by geeks for geeks. It was never intended to be all that user friendly — and, for many people, it’s not. That’s one …