Objectives of knowledge management

Citizen readiness
• 
Measur
es of barriers to
uptake (awareness, trust,
skills, cost)
• Penetration of access
devices
iRc
READINESS
THE e-ECONOMY
Citizen use
• Level of basic use
• Ubiquity/fair
ness
of adoption
• Sophistication of use
iUc
UPTAKE AND USE
Citizen impact
• Impact on
commerce/spending
• Impact on behaviour
iIc
IMPACT
• Educational Infrastructur
e
• Level of IT skills
• Supporting industries
• Climate for innovation
• Cost of access
iEm
Business readiness
• 
Measur
es of barriers to
uptake (awareness, trust,
skills, cost)
• Penetration of access
devices
iRb
Business use
• Level of basic use
(including publication)
• Ubiquity/fair
ness
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
• 
A
wareness, 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
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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: