Conversis presents at the 8th Multicultural Business Conference, Orlando, Florida
15th May 2008, Oxford – In a recent presentation to a mixed audience, Gary Muddyman, CEO and Managing Director of Conversis presented at the 8th Multicultural Business Conference which took place in Orlando, Florida. The topic was “China and it’s opportunities for the USA”. This formed part of the “China and it’s opportunities for small businesses from the United States” workshop and discussion forum.
The Multicultural Business Conference is organized by DiversityBusiness.com, the United States largest multicultural B2B web based organization that introduces large organizations to multicultural product and service suppliers.
Now a leading multicultural business conference, this year’s sponsors included: Cisco, Coca-Cola, AT&T, Office Depot, Walmart, Burger King and Toyota. 850 people attended, each with an interest in the issues faced within multicultural businesses and communities. The main aim of the conference was to focus on the idea that multiculturalism should definitely be considered as positive in a global world and globalized society.
“China is now an international market leader. The forum focused on how US companies can take advantage of the many business opportunities available to them because of this” said Muddyman. “Companies can make themselves more attractive to a Chinese buyer by understanding the market in both a financial and strategic sense”.
In 2007, Conversis commissioned a research study managed by California State University (Chico). “The goal of this study was to explore multinational enterprise websites to establish how well businesses were adapting to Chinese culture and languages”, said Muddyman. “The forum provided me with a perfect opportunity to share the results of the study and provide attendees with a comparative analysis of Chinese and US sites to enable them to learn how to culturally customize websites for both countries” he added.
“The Chinese websites of 100 US Multinationals were selected as the survey sample. In total, each website had almost 15-80 web pages so nearly 5000 pages were analyzed” advised Muddyman. The results were very interesting. Muddyman provides some examples below:
Cultural customization and product localization: Colors
Approximately 20% of the sites analyzed had their colors and aesthetics customized to the Chinese culture.
Cultural customization and product localization: Values
In only about 15% of cases, websites used some Chinese cultural value on their site. “For example, China is a collectivist society so a site should really show groups of people rather than individuals” said Muddyman.
Content localization: Customer Support
Only 5% of sites actually had support on their Chinese language site equivalent to that of the US English site.
Content localization: Policies
Approximately 52% of sites had most or all of their policies translated in Chinese. “In this case, policies refer to shipping, return, privacy, terms of use” added Muddyman.
Content localization: Content Depth
Approximately 20% of sites had all of their sections translated in Chinese.
According to Muddyman, this research provides a tested framework to measure the degree of Chinese localization and cultural customization practices. “Managers can use this framework to analyze their company’s localization efforts towards China” said Muddyman.
About Conversis
Founded in 2003 and based in the United Kingdom, Conversis is now one of the world’s fastest growing and most innovative providers of Globalization, Internationalization, Localization and Translation (GILT) services. As a multilingual one-stop-shop localization company, we understand our client’s industry and business requirements and allocate the best resources to each job. Serving clients in more than 30 markets worldwide, Conversis is dedicated to advancing the understanding and use of GILT as a strategic business tool. More information can be found at http://www.conversisglobal.com.
