A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

Citizen readiness

• Measures of barriers to

  uptake (awareness, trust,

  skills, cost)

• Penetration of access

  devices

iRc

READINESS

THE e-ECONOMY

Citizen use

• Level of basic use

• Ubiquity/fairness

  of adoption

• Sophistication of use

iUc

UPTAKE AND USE

Citizen impact

• Impact on

  commerce/spending

• Impact on behaviour

iIc

IMPACT

• Educational Infrastructure

• Level of IT skills

• Supporting industries

• Climate for innovation

• Cost of access

iEm

Business readiness

• Measures of barriers to

  uptake (awareness, trust,

  skills, cost)

• Penetration of access

  devices

iRb

Business use

• Level of basic use

  (including publication)

• Ubiquity/fairness

  of adoption

• Sophistication of use

iUb

Business impact

• Impact on

  commerce/spending

• Impact on service offering:

  additional/enhanced services

• Impact on working practices

• Impact on costs/effiency

ilb

• Level of political leadership

• Enabling nature of legal

  and regulatory environment

  for e-commerce

iEp

Government readiness

• Awareness, leadership,

  published strategies

• Level of coordination

• Systems readiness, back

  office integration,

  standardisation

iRg

Government use

• Level of basic use

  (including publication)

• Sophistication of use

iUg

Government impact

• Impact on

  commerce/spending

• Impact on working practices

• Impact on costs/effiency

ilg

• Infrastructure availability

• Infrastructure quality

iEi

MARKET

POLITICAL

INFRASTRUCTURAL

ENVIRONMENT

M04_CHAF6542_06_SE_C04.indd   158

7/23/14   12:18 PM

---

159

Chapter 4  E‑environment

Managers can also study e-commerce in leading countries to help predict future e-commerce 

trends in their own country.

Globalisation

 refers to the move towards international trading in a single global market-

place and also to blurring of social and cultural differences between countries. (We saw in 

Chapter 1 that for both SMEs and larger organisations, electronic communications give the 

opportunity for increasing the reach of the company to achieve sales around the world.)

Quelch and Klein (1996) point out some of the obvious consequences for organisations 

that wish to compete in the global marketplace; they say a company must have:

● 

a 24‑hour  order‑  taking and customer service response capability;

● 

regulatory and  customs‑  handling experience to ship internationally;

● 

in‑depth understanding of foreign marketing environments to assess the advantages of its 

own products and services.

Language and cultural understanding may also present a problem and an SME is unlikely 

to possess the resources to develop a  multi-  language version of its site or employ staff with 

sufficient language skills. Similarly, Quelch and Klein (1996) note that the growth of the use 

of the Internet for business will accelerate the trend of English becoming the lingua franca 

of commerce. Tailoring e-commerce services for individual countries or regions is referred 

to as 

localisation

. A website may need to support customers from a range of countries with:

● 

different product needs;

● 

language differences;

● 

cultural differences.

The importance of localisation is highlighted by a report by Common Sense Advisory (2002). 

According to them, for many US Fortune 500 firms, non-US revenue – or what they refer to 

as ‘xenorevenue’ – accounts for 20 to more than 50% of their global income. A similar situa-

tion is likely to exist for non-US multinational organisations.

It may be necessary to vary:

● 

The language that content is provided in.

● 

Tone and style of copy.

● 

Site design – certain colours or images may be unsuitable or less effective in some countries.

● 

Range of product offerings.

● 

Product pricing.

● 

Promotional offers used to encourage acquisition of customer email address (see Chapter 

9). This may be affected by local data protection, taxation and trading laws.

● 

Local contact points.

Localisation will address all these issues. In order to be effective, a website often needs more 

than translation, since different promotion concepts may be needed for different countries. 

For example, Durex (

www.durex.com

) localises content for many countries since language 

and the way in which sexual issues can be discussed vary greatly. 3M (

www.3m.com

), how-

ever, only localises content in local language for some countries such as France, Germany 

and Spain. For large multinational companies, localisation is a significant strategic issue for 

e-commerce. The decision on the level of localisation will need to be taken on a regional or 

country basis to prioritise different countries according to the size of the market and the 

importance of having localisation.

Singh and Pereira (2005) provide an evaluation framework for the level of localisation: