Entering a new international market: preventing cultural faux-pas #IntSS 2023

Written by Syphaiwong Bay

Do you want to break into new markets and conquer the world? 

When a brand is well-established in its home country, with well-established sales methods and systems, it is naturally tempted to replicate its successful strategy internationally. After all, why change an already successful recipe? Wouldn't that be taking ill-considered risks? But it would also be forgetting that the ingredients that make up another country's market are not the same. Cultures are different, and so are foreign competitors. 

But what do we mean when we talk about cultural differences? Are Parisians really colder than the rest of the French population? Does growing up in a different linguistic environment have a real influence on the way we approach events? 

Here you'll find tools to help you gauge the cultural characteristics of the countries in which you want to set up your business. Examples of websites and multilingual communication illustrate these recommendations.

This article is the written version of the conference that took place on November 16, 2023 in Barcelona during the International Search Summit (ISS) organized by Webcertain.

Among the two most frequent cases, we have : 

  • the existing translated website, in other words, a duplication of the original site,

  • a new website to be built in another language.

Bear in mind, however, that having a presence abroad doesn't always mean that these markets are a priority! Depending on your company's strategy, you may well have multilingual versions available for additional sales. But even so, the effort involved is often greater than you might initially think. If only to adapt content to local tax and regulatory requirements, it's vital to take an international extension very seriously. 

Some pure player brands, or those with very few physical points of sale, choose to bet everything on e-commerce. This may be a global strategy, or a way of testing a local market by first making itself known via the Internet and social networks.

National culture

Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede (1928-2020) studied the notion of culture for a group, and in particular the notion of national culture. To differentiate one culture from another, the factors (dimensions) he makes explicit are interesting tools for guiding the choice of content to be published: 

  • power distance,

  • collectivism/individualism, 

  • masculinity/individuality, 

  • uncertainty avoidance, 

  • long-term/short your orientation, 

  • indulgence vs restraint.

To use Geert Hostede's method for your own market research and keyword research, don't be afraid to fall into stereotypes. These stereotypes are the first tools you need to acclimatize yourself to the market you want to conquer. They are also an interesting way of constructing buyers personas when you want to use this type of methodology. But that doesn't erase the fact that a population, even if it has a common national culture, is itself made up of different groups. Each group is also made up of individuals who may themselves be different from one another.

So relying on studies and analyses to identify strategies to implement becomes dangerous if you allow yourself to be seduced by generalizations and clichés. The mere consideration of different purchasing powers within a population is an important notion.

Local etiquette

There are guides to learning local etiquette, or rules of good behavior. They are not necessarily relevant, especially if a population is made up of different groups. It's always more complex than you might think! You could even say that each group has its own standards.

When it comes to cutting cheese, for example, there's no doubt that there's debate!

Adapt your communication to stay close to your audience 

Being close to your customers means making major changes to your communication media. Male/female relations, for example, are very different in different cultures. An outside eye could be shocked by these cultural differences. This raises the question of the level of politicization a brand wishes to embody. 

From a general point of view, it's interesting to ask whether it's possible to remain neutral these days? And how can you be neutral or simply partition your communication without being considered complacent or complicit?

Marking your international presence, even in just one other country, must therefore be done with care. We go far beyond content translation. However, even when it comes to translation alone, the cultural dimension calls for several facets to be taken into account: 

  • culture → reference to the French Revolution

  • formal → intonation, sentence complexity

  • semantic → echoes a proverb

  • varietal → local accent.

Oops! The bad buzz.

You can make mistakes. It's only human.

Culture influences social norms and etiquette. If you've been brought up in a certain culture, you'll be familiar with polite phrases from your upbringing. But there are also many social norms for which knowing the expression "please" is not enough. 

Autism illustrates the importance of learning social and cultural habits. Indeed, developmental disorders such as those on the autism spectrum make learning these social norms and rules more difficult. A neurotypical child has the advantage of being able to instinctively integrate the norms he or she observes in everyday life. That's why, just as you might read a travel guide to find out that you don't order an afternoon cappuccino in Italy, an autistic person is likely to make this kind of faux-pas throughout his or her life, even in his or her own country or in a social group already known. 

What to do when you've actually offended your audience?

Although it may seem too late, it's better to apologize, because the important thing is to choose how you want to be remembered.

The importance of accents and sounds.

Even if your content is text-only, the way it sounds is very important! Sound and rhythm games are very interesting to exploit in copywriting.

Even the name of a product you might think you know very well can refer to different concepts.

  • Home cinema: complete sound system or sound bar?

  • Pencil: wooden or wax?

  • Bathroom: bathroom or toilet?

The "Jolly" or "Sunny" brand, depending on where you are, has pulled off an excellent trick by distributing its products under two different names. Both names are extremely similar in spelling. Bonus: the equivalent number of characters undoubtedly comes in very handy when it comes to printing packaging!

Opportunities

 Risks

Jolly
  • Sound: evokes "pretty" in French
  • Spelling: evokes "joyful" 
  • Old-fashioned connotation in English.
  • Jolly Roger (the pirate flag)
  • Jolly Holiday (parties, celebrations, vacations)

Sunny
  • Evokes the sun when wearing bare legs.

The opportunities brought by

Some cultural specificities are very interesting opportunities to extend the semantic field of your site. Above all, it allows you to respond to needs and search intentions that you wouldn't have known about without taking a closer look at the local culture. In French, for example, while it's common to say "15 jours" to designate a period lasting two weeks, it's not obvious to everyone!

Tips in bulk

  • Use local data for analysis and optimization.

  • Do sensivity reading, taking care not to create a censorship that runs counter to the need for greater inclusivity.

  • Use store maps in target countries to study your website's tree structure.

Intertextuality

You can play with intertextuality by using references and quotations without using quotation marks. Be careful, though, as you won't be able to control interpretations! 

Recruiting different sensivity readers helps detect unintentional missteps when a communication element is interpreted as a reference.

That's why cross-functional collaboration between the various players involved in a project is a key factor in the success of your international expansion. In fact, certain recommendations may conflict with each other! It's essential to put your cards on the table, so you can make the most informed decisions possible. Once your content is online, preventing reputational crises by means of social listening can be very useful.

Conclusion

International expansion offers opportunities, but also risks, requiring a sensitive approach and adaptation to cultural specificities. It's likely that you'll have some intuitions about what to do and what not to do. Listen to them! But don't let your intuitions decide for you. Internationalizing a website is an exciting project that opens up great opportunities to learn more about another culture. If you take a genuine interest in the lifestyles and needs of local audiences, you'll be rewarded both in human terms and in terms of results for your site. In this way, you may not make the best choices immediately, but you'll certainly make the most intelligent ones for your project at the time.

Bibliography : 

Syphaiwong Bay https://www.syphaiwong.com/
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