Allowing content to be controlled locally can help ensure that viewers get a cogent message (which is the whole point of publishing). But this has the potential to raise havoc with establishing or maintaining a clear corporate image or message. In addition, the integrity of data may not be maintained consistently. Information may be released in the US on Monday, but not translated for one country until Tuesday or for another until Thursday. On the other hand, it's a competitive world out there and the website that best gets the message across first wins.
Despite all the problems it will introduce, it seems inevitable that we are facing a customized future. Let's look briefly at Dell here. Dell Computer is now the world's number two. How did it achieve this? How did it bulldoze its way into a mature market, with retail outlets already stuffed with rival products?
It used a direct selling model. It first approached major corporations who would buy computers and IT in bulk, but it concentrated on discovering a corporations' particular strategy (bottom right in Figure 8.3). It then offered to assemble components accordingly (top right in the same Figure).
Figure 8.3: Dell - from product to solution
But what business is Dell in? Dell is an assembler, not a manufacturer. It orders key components in massive volumes, thus getting costs way down through near-universal purchasing. Finally Dell shows each unique customer how their chosen business strategy can be monitored, recorded, and expressed in terms of information technology. While components of any solution are standardized, the solution itself remains unique and customized with "Premier Pages" on the Internet for each customer.
Davis and Pine have called this process mass customization, first introduced by the Japanese automobile industry and now widely imitated (Davis and Pine, 1999). By delivering components just in time to a central assembly line, thirty to forty varieties of automobiles come off at the end, with little loss of speed or momentum. Information systems define and describe each configuration in advance and components are dispatched to make their rendezvous with the vehicle in the process of assembly. This is a long way from Henry Ford's "any color provided it's black."
In short, one could say that by its very technical nature the Internet could help marketers go global with universal approaches easily. However, many private and corporate clients remain local. Solutions are not found in a choice between the two. The beauty of the sophistication of the Net is that it allows you to combine local data with global approaches and vice versa.
Take the very popular websites of BOL (A European-based web retailer), Amazon, and Google. When visiting their sites you are automatically rerouted to the closest localized version. For example, if the server detects that you are based in the Netherlands, it redirects you there. The language changes automatically, and the service localizes as well. However, the main philosophy remains global.
This is even more obvious with shops like BOL and Amazon. When you look for a book on Amazon.co.uk you are offered different categories of books for your perusal, as you are with Amazon.com or Amazon.de. Again the overall (global) philosophy remains the same and the local user can always choose to visit other Amazon sites as well.
Customer identification (and identifying their needs) has always been a fundamental requirement for presenting the right offer to the right customer at the right time. Internet marketing forces the transition of this capability from a back-office batch routine to real time in order to optimize the offer process and apply closed-loop marketing techniques. This process requires careful thinking to achieve best practice (Cameron, 2001).
Amazon has successfully used the two-way communication interactionist model (described briefly above) to learn a significant amount from local buying patterns. After five years of being successful in their market, the surfer can now see an increase in the differentiation of the items that the top-level menu offers on the home page. In addition to the core business of books, in the US this emphasizes apparel and accessories, toys and games, top sellers and today's deals, which you won't find on the French, German, and British Amazon sites. The French have "cadeaux" (presents), while the Germans have "Kueche & Haushalt" (kitchen and household) as an option on their menu. The British site had Harry Potter as a separate item.
Amazon has learned continually from local use and adjusted the universal system to fit. Furthermore, by tracking individual buyers and search pattern requests they create a client's private "box" for deals and are able to make other types of recommendations to suit the unique taste of the particular user. In this way the universal and global offering is reconciled with particular local needs.
Your personal calendar
A simpler example is an unsolicited email from Hewlett-Packard inviting recipients to "make your own unique calendar." HP offers a way to make your own personalized printed calendar completely unique by importing your own choice of pictures or photographs - either your own or those from a library provided by HP. In this way the Internet is used to offer a combination of modules that can be combined in a unique way - hence your "personal" calendar. Calendar... obviously this encourages you to use a lot of ink on your HP printer!
Let's draw from the experiences of our own organization, THT, and consider the following case, concerning a learning system across cultures delivered via the Internet.
The Culture Compass
In 2001 Trompenaars Hampden-Turner launched a new web-based tool. The Culture Compass OnLine is used for standalone or blended learning - that is, in combination with in-company training workshops. It is a country-specific, interactive multimedia Internet application for international managers, business travellers, expatriates, and others who regularly deal with different cultures.
A multicountry module facilitates self-paced learning through direct feedback on the user's scores and preferences. Users can match their own personal Intercultural Awareness Profile against the country profile of their choice. Business cases, anecdotes, personalized feedback, and recommendations are all part of the basic module and differ by country for each individual's scores. Apart from business topics such as meetings, management, marketing, and negotiations, users also acquire knowledge about important issues relating to a culture's history, social norms, and religion. The Culture Compass presently provides specific in-depth feedback for 12 countries, namely the US, UK, Japan, Germany, France, Netherlands, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Ireland, Israel, and China. Country profiles from some further 80 countries are also accessible online.
It forms part of the training kit for our workshops at THT. All workshop participants receive an access password before the workshop commences, allowing them to complete the preparatory work. Thus they work through the first modules in preparation, for the workshop.
The Culture Compass OnLine consists of a number of interactive modules:
An introduction to culture: How does culture influence our lives? This discusses the three steps of awareness, respect, and reconciliation.
Layers of culture: This module gives an overview of the THT model that explores the layers of culture.
Questionnaire and dimensions of culture: Introducing the seven dimensions model and then linking to the online Intercultural, Awareness Profiler (IAP), THT's cross-cultural questionnaire.
Interpreting your own personal cross-cultural profile: Receive an personalized interpretation of your profile.