Just when we thought Google and China had become mutually exclusive terms, the news comes out in this April 3, 2012 Reuters article, Google to Grow Display, Mobile Ad Businesses in China, that:
Google Inc will continue to invest in China, where it has a testy relationship with the government, with a focus on growing its fast-growing display and mobile advertising businesses, its Asia chief said on Tuesday.
After massive hacking efforts into its assets being tracked to China and the ongoing battle with Chinese gov’t authorities over censorship issues, Google hasn’t blinked on expansion plans in China. Many U.S. corporations have had similar growing pains with China and all in all the relationship in many cases is a bittersweet one. Even in the face of the general risks businesses face when doing business in China–from Government corruption to intellectual property compromises–there have not been any signs of waffling from international forces like Google. And why would there be–China has the largest growing middle class in the world, and they’re ready to spend!
“Google’s APAC President Daniel Alegre said: Google can serve as a platform for the vast number of small and medium enterprises in China to access global consumers.” If China’s merchants are excited about reaching global consumers, surely foreign e-merchants must be just as thrilled to access an ever advancing internet savvy consumer base in China.
As any seasoned etailer knows, accessing the right demographic isn’t as easy as yi-er-san (1,2,3 in Chinese), as evidenced in some of the points featured in last week’s blog, When Etailers Unintentionally Attract International Traffic; namely that most merchants don’t have any of the critical systems in place to sell and move product effectively outside of their domestic areas of operation.
Instead, online merchants are putting the onus of international trade on third party consultants and e-shipping solutions. However, firms specializing in international solutions for ecommerce want a piece of the pie too, and many are doing a great job ushering effective global solutions in without the hiccups that occur sans the expert touch.
In fact, even ebiz development companies are scrambling to partner with firms specializing in international business for ecommerce merchants simply because over the last year the world has become so much “flatter” than ever before. FastPivot partner, GlobalShopEx, handles international shipping, currency conversions, etc. for e-merchants. They help qualify what products will ship or not and make it easy for international customers to check out. Working with global solution providers like GlobalShopEx eliminates shipping risks, while at the same time increasing international revenue increases by up to 5-10% . To learn more about Going Global, contact FastPivot (we install GlobalShopEx’s solution for Yahoo! Stores).
