Selling Nearly 2.5 Billion People Around the Globe Online

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According to a recent study by MasterCard, people adopt personas when shopping online — an interesting consideration for ecommerce businesses.

The Digital Sharing and Trust Project shows that consumers actually shed their “real-world” identities when they go online to assume “digital personas."  To be more specific, there are five different personas parading themselves around the web today.

What does this mean for selling in the online world?  It means getting to know your customers can be tricky.

Learn more:  5 global online personas your business should take note of

Factors to Consider When Developing a Global Brand for the Audience of the 21st Century

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Flavia Barbat conducts an interview with Sandy Suffield (former art director at Apple) from the London office and Mike Abbink (co-founder of Method) from the New York office. The entire interview includes Wolff Olins and several of its global creative directors and is available in the most recent Premium Issue of Branding Magazine, entitled "Crafting the Brands of the 21st Century."

Here's an excerpt of the interview:  Meet the Global Creative Directors of the 21st Century 

And here's the first question posed to Sandy:

Overall, what do you consider to be the first thing one must take into consideration when developing a brand for the audience of the 21st century? 

How Joint Ventures Can Be a Good Global Market Entry or Expansion Method

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American Express Company recently announced plans to create a joint venture designed to accelerate the transformation of its Global Business Travel (GBT) division.

American Express is in ongoing discussions with regard to a proposed joint venture in which it would share the ownership of the joint venture with an investor group led by Certares, a firm headed by senior management with significant experience in the travel industry.  The joint venture transaction is expected to create greater investment capacity for GBT to further enhance its suite of products and services, attract new customers and grow internationally to deliver additional value to customers.

I write about joint-ventures in my new exporting book (Chapter 17) in how they can prove to be a most viable way to enter a foreign market or expand within it.  Each party usually takes an equal equity stake and this case is no different (50 percent equity stake).

Read the news on the joint-venture here to see what other value the two companies will get out of forming a joint venture.

Feel With Your Heart

©2013 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart." - Helen Keller

For Irish Entrepreneurs, Small Is Beautiful

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Ireland has the Small Firms Association (SFA), considered the "Voice of Small Business" with over 8000 member companies.

SFA assists you in managing your business, as well as allowing you to interact with fellow members through their member's directory listing.

In addition, SFA provides full details of upcoming events and management training, along with featuring their most recent news updates and outline of lobbying policy submissions and press statements issued to represent your interests. 

Give it look here:  Small Firms Association

The Little Import Business That Could

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When it comes to importing, everyone starts small.  It goes like this:  You think of a brilliant product idea, find a supplier, import the product and start selling away. 

In the article below, Kelly Spors outlines what it takes, especially on the compliance side of things, to open a small import business.

Opening a Small Import Business

Related article(s):  How to Start and Run a Profitable Import/Export Business and How to Comply with Import Regulations

Only 1 in 5 UK SMEs Export

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Is it surprising that according to UK-based CBI, only one in five UK SMEs exports? 

This is especially surprising if you add the additional statistic that businesses are 11% more likely to survive if they do so. Then, when you mix in research from the government's UK Trade & Investment body which states that exporting SMEs are 34% more productive in their first year than those SMEs who do not, you wonder why UK businesses remain so internationally reticent.

Read the entire article:  Mapping the small business export market