Global by Design

The folks at MarketingSherpa have posted a handy article on launching a product in Japan. Check it out now as it will be locked down on July 31st.
Here’s an excerpt:
DON’T: Obsess about learning the language. Foreign marketers entering Japan often try to learn the language before and during their short stints to establish partnerships or [...]

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First of all, I must admit that I’m a year off on predicting when eBay’s international revenues would surpass domestic revenues. I had predicted 2006. I underestimated how quickly eBay’s domestic revenues would continue to grow — and for the past year they kept growing at a fairly decent pace (though financial analysts might disagree).
But [...]

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If the world’s population of 6.3 billion people were represented by just 100 people, where would they live?

More than two-thirds of them would live in Asia and Africa.
Next would be Europe, with 12 residents, and Latin America, with 8.
Only five people would live in North America.
Looking at global growth trends, it’s safe to say that [...]

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More and more US companies and Web sites are accelerating their pace of global expansion.Consider the following:

According to this Reuters article, Starbucks plans to increase the number of international stores by 20% annually in the years ahead while keeping the number of US stores relatively flat. Starbucks is pushing into China, Brazil, and Argentina.
Shares of [...]

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Amazon has had a presence in China since its 2004 acquisition of Joyo.com.
And it appears things are going quite nicely. Says Jeff Bezos in a recent Wall Street Journal article: China “is by far the fastest-growing part of Amazon anywhere in the world,” Mr. Bezos said. “This business is remarkable, and it’s growing so rapidly [...]

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In case you thought that Google’s austere home page design was sacrosanct, think again.
In an effort to win over the locals in Korea, Google has just launched a new design that not only features twice as much text, but also features animation:

Try it out yourself.
According to Search Engine Land, “The new, animated Google Korea home [...]

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A few weeks ago I wrote about AOL’s new portal for India. According to Reuters, or, Thomson, AOL is only just getting started.

AOL plans to expand into 14 markets over the next two years. And this is in addition to the portals it recently launched for India, Netherlands, and Austria.
AOL is also opening an office [...]

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AOL has just gone live with its India Web portal as the company seeks to grab a growing slice of this rapidly growing market.
Says Ron Grant, AOL president and COO, “This is a very important — I would say critical — market for us. India has the highest priority in our international business.”
AOL already [...]

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Okay, so I’ve written about Google and eBay are how they’ve hugely benefited from investing in Web globalization. That’s all fine and good, but what does this mean for a company that manufacturers and sells physical goods globally? Where’s the ROI there?
Funny you should ask, as I just read a Wall Street Journal article on [...]

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What’s the ROI of Web globalization you ask?
Let’s take a look at two recent earnings announcements from Google and eBay, two major bellweathers of the virtual global economy.
Let’s begin with Google, whose main revenue engine Adwords has been localized into more than 40 languages.
According to Google’s earnings announcement today, “Revenues from outside of the [...]

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