... It is then crucial for a company to maintain a worldˇXwide presence, an effective presence that delivers the message across to potential buyers over different barriers in international e-commerce activities, including language, culture, access and infrastructure issues. Hence, emerged a new, revolutionary electronic-technology practice- ˇ§electronic commerce localizationˇ¨- the process of adapting a product or service to the peculiarities of a language community. ... Of various types of electronic technologies, Internet, and in particular the Web, plays a crucial role in overcoming the time and geographical limitations, allowing companies to conduct and operate their businesses on-line in real-time, which is commonly known as electronic commerce (hereafter abbreviated as e-commerce) or otherwise referred to as electronic business (e-business). ... This paper will however focus particularly on companyˇ¦s external business operation, how the company conducts e-commerce activities through their Web site, and evaluating on the efficiency and relevance to the use of Web for these e-commerce activities. ... It then makes it vital for company to maintain a worldˇXwide presence, an effective presence that delivers the message across to potential buyers over different barriers in international e-commerce activities, including language, culture, access and infrastructure issues. Technically, these are referred to as the term ˇ§localizationˇ¨, meaning the process of adapting a product or service to a specific locale, including the linguistic and cultural aspects, fitting in the standards and legal requirements, as well as meeting the needs and expectations of a specific target market. This paper therefore encompasses these aspects as ˇ§e-commerce localizationˇ¨ in investigating and evaluating how companies transport their online businesses to foreign-language markets.
Language
The first step to localization is translation- translating the website to the language of that specific target market. ... 91) points out, ˇ§e-customer prefers to speak in his own languageˇ¨, where seeing the website in his or her own local language makes the browsing experience more comfortable, accurate and more at ease. ... This can be exemplified in the web advertisement or key marketing messages, without a good rendition of this message, the e-customer may well miss out on the pitch, and fail to catch the subtle meaning within the message. ... In one of the user testing where web users were instructed to search for ˇ§a suitable car seat for a babyˇ¨. After several attempts in keying ˇ§child seatˇ¨, ˇ§children seatˇ¨, ˇ§child restraintˇ¨, it still did not generate the desired results, thus the user got frustrated and gave up. Apparently, the Wal-Mart website only recognized the word ˇ§kidˇ¨ and not ˇ§childˇ¨ (Nielsen, Molich, Synder and Farrell, 2001, p. ...
Although the e-customer may be able to cope in another language, the customer will appreciate much better when the message is delivered in his or her mother tongue. ... 255) echoes, that researches found that e-customers are more likely to purchase products and services from websites that are designed in their own language, even if they can read English well. ...
In actual fact, as Trans-Asia states, ˇ§language barrier is one reason why growth of a truly international e-commerce sector has lagged domestic developmentˇ¨.
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