Page 211 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

THE INTERNET
We would be remiss if we did not mention the World Wide Web and international marketing. One of the key ways many firms have traditionally gotten started overseas is through overseas trade shows. These big trade shows are often scheduled a year or two ahead of time and repeated every year. The shows bring thousands of potential buyers and sellers together for the very purpose of connected manufacturers and firms that can help them export to their market. These days the Web is also an interesting strategy to reach customers outside your home market.
San Francisco-based upscale retailer, The Sharper Image, according to the august Wall Street Journal, now gets more than 28 per cent of its online business from overseas customers. The biggest place for online orders is their website, sharperimage.com, which mainly serves the home market of the US. It also operates 10 other sites for markets worldwide, including a Spanish-language version of its US site that’s used by consumers in Mexico and Latin America as well as by Spanish-speaking people in the US. The other sites are designed for the UK, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, with a separate site for the European Union. According to press reports, to expedite shipping and returns in its busiest foreign markets – several European countries – Sharper Image maintains a distribution centre in Rotterdam, Netherlands, for returns as well as deliveries.
Another of the world’s big catalogue and Internet retailers is Lands’ End, with headquarters in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. According to a 2005 article in Time, Lands’ End created French and Italian versions of its American website in 2004. Says Sam Taylor, vice president of Lands’ End international operations: ‘There’s a feeling we want to come through in the copywriting when it’s translated’. For a women’s gingham-check swimsuit, marketed to French customers, consultant Berlitz modified the catalogue copy to read, ‘L’effet B.B. assure!’ (The B.B. look guaranteed!), a reference to Brigitte Bardot, who made gingham fashionable in the 1950s. Within a decade, Lands’ End forecasts that 35 to 45 per cent of revenues will be generated abroad.
These examples demonstrate that for well-known brands getting people to visit their website is less of a task. Smaller firms are in a
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