an extract of this report

Transcription

Reaching
America‟s
e-Latinos
A Practical Guide to Multicultural
Marketing and E-mail Response
By Donald A. DePalma
February 2005
Reaching America‟s e-Latinos
By Donald A. DePalma
February 2005
ISBN: 1-933555-13-0
ISBN: 978-1-933555-13-3
Copyright © 2005 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc., Lowell, Massachusetts,
United States of America.
Published by:
Common Sense Advisory, Inc.
100 Merrimack Street
Suite 301
Lowell, MA 01852-1708 USA
+1.978.275.0500
[email protected]
www.commonsenseadvisory.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108
of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission
of the Publisher.
Permission requests should be addressed to the Permissions Department,
Common Sense Advisory, Inc., Suite 301, 100 Merrimack Street, Lowell, MA
01852-1708, +1.978.275.0500, E-Mail: [email protected]. See
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Trademarks: Common Sense Advisory, Global Watchtower, Global DataSet,
DataPoint, Globa Vista, Quick Take, and Technical Take are trademarks of
Common Sense Advisory, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.
Information is based on the best available resources at the time of analysis.
Opinions reflect the best judgment of Common Sense Advisory’s analysts at the
time, and are subject to change.

i
Table of Contents
Latinos Present New Opportunity to Business Planners ............................................................ 1
Why Does the U.S. Latino Market Matter?..................................................................................... 2
Who Should Read This Report? ........................................................................................................ 3
It’s Time to Start Paying Attention to Ethnic Communities ....................................................... 4
Question: What Business Content Can Ethnic Audiences Find Online?................................. 6
Methodology for Site Review ............................................................................................................ 8
Sixteen Companies Lead the Way to Latino-Aware Marketing Online ................................ 10
The Best Global Brands for American Latinos .............................................................. 11
The Best of Internet Retailers for U.S. Latinos .............................................................. 14
A Subjective Assessment: Does the Site Meet its Goals? ............................................. 14
Tips for Helping Visitors Get More Information .......................................................... 17
A Tough Test for Any Site: Interactivity and Transactions ......................................... 17
Brands Use a Variety of Web Address Structures for U.S. Hispanic Sites ................ 19
Maybe Not to Language, But Many Firms Show a Commitment to Diversity ........ 20
Conclusions from Our Website Review ........................................................................................ 21
Who We E-Mailed and How We Collected Data ....................................................................... 23
Message 1: Request for Product Information ................................................................ 24
Message 2: Minor Complaint .......................................................................................... 26
Message 3: Compliment about Website ......................................................................... 27
Message 4: Where to Buy Products ................................................................................ 28
Reviewing Data from the E-mail Responses ................................................................................ 28
How Well Did Our Latino Content Champions Do with Spanish Queries? ............ 28
Some Companies Took Forever to Respond ................................................................. 30
One Surprise: We Thought Webforms Would Have Fared Better ............................. 33
We Wanted to Know Whether They Did Better on the Phone ................................................ 33
Conclusions from Our Online Communications Experiment ................................................. 35
Why Don’t Companies Respond to Web Inquiries? .................................................................. 38
The Quality of Responses in Both Languages Varied Greatly ................................................. 39
Many Companies Answered Spanish Inquiries in English ........................................ 41
Honesty Is the Best Policy................................................................................................ 41
The Good: Some Companies Did a Great Job Answering in Spanish ....................... 42
The Bad: Some Firms Need to Get Their Customer Service Act Together................ 44
The Ugly: English Sí, Español No! .................................................................................. 46
Best Practices for Managing Inquiries from the Web................................................................. 47
Adding Ethnic Awareness – and Success – to Any Brand........................................................ 50
Step 1: Research – Study, Segment, and Target Desirable Populations .................... 50
Step 2: Strategy – Develop a Deliberate Cross-Channel Multicultural Plan ............. 52
Step 3: Organization – Utilize In-house and External Resources ............................... 53
Step 4: Content – Invest in the Right Mix of Materials ................................................ 56
Step 5: Technology – Use Corporate Solutions ............................................................. 60
Step 6: ROI – Measure Effectiveness Using Mainstream Tools .................................. 62
Getting Started with a Low Volume of Inquiries ........................................................................ 63
The Basics: Auto Responding to an E-Mail Message or Webform ......................................... 65
Create Informative Canned Responses .......................................................................... 65
Collect the Right Data on Your Webform...................................................................... 66
Copyright © 2004 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc.
February 2005
ii
Deploy Language Sniffers to Identify Language ........................................................................ 67
Explore Where Text Mining of Messages Might Improve Your Business ............................ 68
Power Up More Powerful (and More Expensive) CRM Systems ........................................... 69
The Postman Doesn’t Ring Twice Online ..................................................................................... 69
It’s Time to Add the Latino Demographic to Targeted Marketing Plans.............................. 70
Global Brands and Website Availability in Spanish .................................................................. 71
Global Brand E-Mail Rsponse ......................................................................................................... 74
U.S. Internet Retailers ........................................................................................................................ 78
About Common Sense Advisory ............................................................................................. 80
Future Research ............................................................................................................................ 80
Figures
Figure 1: Spanish Language Unifies Hispanics in the U.S................................................. 3
Figure 2: Almost Two-Thirds of Global Brands Claim U.S. Citizenship ......................... 8
Figure 3: Spanish Websites Beat Other Second Languages by Wide Margin ............... 10
Figure 4: Companies That Target Latinos Tend to Offer Most of Site in Spanish ........ 11
Figure 5: How Some Brands Attract U.S. Residents Who Prefer Spanish ..................... 13
Figure 6: Online Retailers Offer Varying Levels of Spanish Support ............................ 15
Figure 7: Tip Sheet: Meeting the Needs of Latino Visitors .............................................. 21
Figure 8: Most Companies Prefer Webforms over E-Mail............................................... 24
Figure 9: Topic of Inquiry Had Little Impact on Whether Global Brands Replied ...... 31
Figure 10: Topic of Inquiry Had Little Impact on Whether E-Tailers Replied ............. 31
Figure 11: Few Global Brands Responded in Real Time .................................................. 32
Figure 12: Few U.S. E-Tailers Responded in Real Time ................................................... 32
Figure 13: Global Brand Response to English Messages via E-Mail vs. Webform ....... 34
Figure 14: E-Tailer Response to English Messages via E-Mail vs. Webform ................ 34
Figure 15: Tip Sheet: Improving Online Communications .............................................. 37
Figure 16: Reuters Manages a Threaded Discussion for Web Communications......... 42
Figure 17: Tip Sheet: Building Customer Relationships via the Web ............................ 48
Figure 18: Tip Sheet: Foundation to Support Multicultural Marketing ......................... 51
Figure 19: Multichannel Appeal to U.S .Latinos ............................................................... 53
Figure 20: Yahoo! Traveled Pan-American Highway for U.S. Latino Content ............. 56
Figure 21: Effective Content Mapping for Ethnic Sites .................................................... 57
Figure 22: Amazon Offers Spanish Hierarchy with Large Dollops of English ............. 59
Figure 23: Ford Grinds Some Gears with English Metatags and Monolingual Kate ... 60
Figure 24: Webform Structures Communications with Online Visitors ........................ 67
Tables
Table 1: Sites That Target the U.S. Latino Consumer (listed in alphabetic order).......... 9
Table 2: Comparison of Global Brands’ English and Spanish Sites for U.S. Market.... 12
Table 3: Comparison of Online Retailers’ English and Spanish Sites for U.S. Market 14
Table 4: Subjective Assessment of Effectiveness of Spanish Content ............................ 16
Table 5: Helpfulness of Spanish Sites (‚SP‛ Spanish, ‚EN‛ English ) ........................... 17
February 2005
Unauthorized Reproduction & Distribution Prohibited
iii
Table 6: Transacting in Spanish – or Not (‚SP‛ for Spanish, ‚EN‛ for English) .......... 18
Table 7: Different Approaches to Web Addresses for Latino Sites ................................ 19
Table 8: Guide to Interpreting Data Tables for Responses to Web Inquiries ................ 25
Table 9: How Companies Answered Requests for Information ..................................... 26
Table 10: How Companies Reacted to Complaints .......................................................... 26
Table 11: How Companies Reacted to Compliments ....................................................... 27
Table 12: How Companies Answered Questions about Where to Buy Products ........ 28
Table 13: Sites with High Spanish Content Did Not Excel in Response ........................ 29
Table 14: What Do Companies Do When Spanish-Speaking Latinos Call Them? ....... 36
Table 15: Some Problems Show Up Repeatedly in Company Responses ..................... 40
Table 16: A Task List for Reaching Latinos through Different Channels ...................... 52
Table 17: Top 10 Advertisers in the U.S. Hispanic Market .............................................. 54
Table 18: Marketing to Latinos Offline ............................................................................... 55
Table 19: Free Translation Resources for Large-Population Languages........................ 64
Table 20: Free Machine Translation Approximates What Correspondent Wants ........ 64
Table 21: Global Brand Websites in Spanish ..................................................................... 74
Table 22: Summary of Responses for Global Brands ........................................................ 77
Table 23: Summary of Responses for Internet Retailers .................................................. 79
February 2005
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
February 2005
1
Topic
Latinos Present New Opportunity to Business Planners
Despite a dramatic increase in media attention to the U.S. Hispanic Nation since
the 2000 census, surprisingly most businesses have yet to tailor their online
message to the large Latino population within the United States. In our research
of the top 100 global brand name companies and 50 top U.S. e-tailers, it is clear
that most businesses continue to treat the U.S. as a homogenous Englishspeaking market. To compound the problem, we discovered that most
companies fail to answer their e-mails at all, either in English or Spanish.
We found that only 12 of the top 100 global brands and just four of 50 top U.S.
online retailers translated a significant part of their corporate websites for
American Latinos. A significant percentage of inquiries sent in Spanish via e-mail
or webform went unanswered. Inquiries in English elicited only a slightly better
response rate. With no answers to their e-mails, existing customers or potential
buyers tend to dial expensive call centers to get their questions answered or click
away to a retailer more interested in answering their questions.
Clearly, these companies are overlooking the growing Latino market. While this
finding did not necessarily surprise us, we did expect a higher level of response
from the retailers that directly target the American consumer market. However,
the 16 companies that have taken steps to recognize the online Latino population
prove that it is possible to begin creating an effective strategy to target this
critical demographic.
Many global brands do show a commitment. The good news is there are steps
that companies can and do take to address this market opportunity. For example,
many global brands show a commitment to minorities through their diversity
programs. Some have even established their own foundations to support
minorities, most frequently championing Hispanic, Asian-American, and
African-American initiatives. Some companies have won awards and have been
singled out as good places for Latinos to work. As a distinct group, e-tailers have
not yet invested in such efforts; however, we do hope that the emerging trend to
recognize ethnic populations within the U.S. offline corporate culture will soon
make inroads online.
February 2005
2
Why Does the U.S. Latino Market Matter?
Why should global brands and e-tailers – in fact, any business – find the U.S.
Latino market interesting? Representing 13 percent of the U.S. population (38
million), Latino America has surpassed the population of Canada, and ranks as
the fifth largest group of Spanish speakers in the world after Mexico, Spain,
Colombia, and Argentina. By 2050, this group will grow another 25 percent.
Today, Latino America accounts for more people online than any other
hispanohablante nation, and averages more page views per day than other
American web users. And unlike previous generations of immigrants, U.S.
Latinos retain their language and culture – 78 percent speak Spanish – even as
they work and play in the dominant Anglophone economy.1 Nearly two-thirds of
Latino adults are first-generation immigrants, all comfortable in Spanish.
Consider the data:
Many prefer Spanish. Fifty-eight percent of Latinos favor Spanish when
given a choice, 70 percent when being interviewed.2 Cable systems around
the country offer Univision and Telemundo; broadcast networks feature
multicultural soaps and dramas; films like ‚Y tu mam{ también‛ appeal to
cross-over audiences; singer Linda Ronstadt connected with her Hispanic
roots and met with rave reviews; and Latino Americans spend almost as
much (or in some cases more) time watching Spanish-language TV and
reading newspapers as they do English media. The Spanish language unifies
Latinos with many national heritages (see Figure 1).
They have money and spend it. U.S. Latinos trail only Spain in prosperity. In
2004, American Latino consumers spent over US$650 billion. American
Latinos also pay to stay connected with their roots. Many first-generation
immigrants regularly phone, visit, and send money to friends and family
back home. Research indicates a high degree of brand loyalty among Latinos
living in the United States.
They use the web. Latinos work and play regularly on the internet, logging
slightly more time online per day than the average American. In all the
media they consume, many are looking for more Spanish-language content.
1
2
Data from U.S. Census Bureau, the CIA World Factbook, and comScore Networks.
‚The Evidence for Spanish Language Marketing and Market Research,‛ Felipe Korzenny, 2000.
February 2005
3
Mexican
66%
Cuban
4%
Other Hispanic
6%
Puerto Rican
9%
Central and South
American
15%
Figure 1: Spanish Language Unifies Hispanics in the U.S.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
They represent America’s future. Today Latinos exercise an ever increasing
degree of political and economic clout, driving companies that are looking
for new business to address this demographic. This population includes
consumers, employees, shareholders, and business owners. Furthermore,
immigration from Latin America and higher birth rates promise a younger
population, which means that the median age of U.S. residents in 2050 will be
35 – versus the doddering 52-year old Europeans. The flow of Spanishspeaking immigrants to the States – 400,000 per year – continually refreshes
and invigorates culture and language, far more than earlier waves of
immigrants.
Who Should Read This Report?
If you sell consumer goods or services online, it is time to review your strategy
for ethnic communities in the United States – and understand that the customer
service best practices that you develop for Latino Americans will apply in global
markets. And with increased broadband connectivity and more innovations to
make sites easier to shop, global brands and e-tailers alike can further tap the
internet’s potential to extend their reach to a growing number of consumers.
February 2005
4
Marketing executives, strategists, market development managers, and corporate
communications specialists should assess multicultural opportunities and needs
in an effort to become trusted suppliers to a financially powerful and growing
demographic. As these corporate players coordinate traditional channels – print,
TV, and radio – with online media, they will need web designers, information
architects, usability experts, and external language service providers (LSPs) to
tailor sites, either linguistically or culturally. These professionals will have to
address corporate concerns such as return on investment and the cost-benefit of
translating everything versus more focused approaches.
It‟s Time to Start Paying Attention to Ethnic Communities
Marketing to domestic cultural audiences online offers a major opportunity to
find new audiences for products and services. How would you react if your vice
president of marketing told you that she had chosen to ignore a big chunk of
your potential market? Unfortunately, we found such disregard for the
multicultural opportunity in our sample of both global brands and leading
e-tailers. The bottom line: By neglecting to market to major multicultural
populations such as Latinos, African-Americans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and
Cambodians, businesses are missing valuable opportunities to build brand,
mindshare, and loyalty. The burgeoning Hispanic population is an ideal first
target, and your efforts spent here will transfer to other markets.
Lest your firm ignore the upside of large ethnic populations, it is time to review
your strategy for appealing to these communities – not just as consumers, but as
employees, entrepreneurs, students, and so on. Websites need to be integrated
with offline activities to create integrated, cross-channel policy for multicultural
groups. While this report focuses on the U.S. Latino opportunity, the challenge is
by no means unique to the United States. Globalization and the porousness of
borders have led to underserved ethnic populations in many countries.
These efforts to market to multicultural communities will parallel government
activity. Judicial rulings and executive orders relating to social government
services will force government agencies to provide interpretation and translated
documents, forms, and instructions for U.S. citizens with limited English
proficiency (LEP). Public and private firms providing services to the government
or accepting federal funds will face the same requirements, thus creating new
market demand for domestic translation and interpretation services (see
‚Translation – It's the Law!‛ Apr04).
February 2005
5
This report will help you assess your strategy for addressing multicultural
opportunities. The following sections present our findings, insights, and best
practices for multicultural marketing.
La Voz de las Compañías. See what today’s leading businesses are (and are
not) doing. This section documents our review of the corporate websites of
the top 100 brands and the selling sites of 50 top U.S. e-tailers. This section
highlights the most culturally responsive businesses, outlines how they
designed their sites, and shows what content they offer online.
Customer response survey. This section explains our methodology for
contacting these 150 companies and summarizes how they responded.
E-mail responses. This section categorizes the types of responses we received
from these firms, analyzing the nature of the answers and how they shape,
for better or worse, a firm’s public persona.
Strategy. Based on market research, the practices of leading sites, and
subjective analysis by Spanish speakers, in this section we identify what
works (and what does not) for ethnic marketing. We suggest near-term
actions that companies can take to improve their appeal to any domestic
ethnic audiences. We also make detailed recommendations for firms to do
more research, develop a cross-channel marketing plan, improve how they
are organized, and create market-appropriate content.
Technology and services. Since we determined that there is a corporate email disconnect in English as well as Spanish, this section suggests best
processes and useful technology to manage effective e-mail response,
minimize the number of inquiries to expensive call centers, and increase
online conversion rates.
February 2005
6
La Voz de las Compañías
In this section of the report, we describe our search for Spanish and other
multicultural content used in the corporate web sites of the top 100 global brands
and 50 top online retailers. Then we present the results of our e-mail and
webform attempts to contact these companies both in English and Spanish.
Question: What Business Content Can Ethnic Audiences Find Online?
For years Common Sense Advisory has questioned why most American firms
neglect marketing to major multicultural populations in the U.S. – Latinos,
African-Americans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cambodians. This query proved
even more pressing with the 2000 census that highlighted the demographic,
economic, and sociopolitical impact of the burgeoning Hispanic population. Our
experience and research, coupled with the census data, led us to question how
top global brands and internet retailers address this population.
Just as we began new research on domestic ethnic marketing, we came across the
2003 Business Week list of the 100 most valuable global brands3 and Internet
Retailer’s 2003 roll-call of the 50 leading U.S. e-tailers. We reviewed their websites
to see whether and how they market themselves to ethnic groups.
Most of these global brands should be familiar names. Accenture, Adidas,
Amazon, American Express, AOL, Apple, Avon, Bacardi, Barbie, BMW,
Boeing, BP, Budweiser, Burger King, Canon, Caterpillar, Chanel, Cisco,
Citibank, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Danone, Dell, Disney, Duracell, Ericsson,
FedEx, Ford, GAP, GE, Gillette, Goldman Sachs, Gucci, Harley-Davidson,
Heineken, Heinz, Hennessy, Hermes, Hertz, Hewlett-Packard, Honda, HSBC,
IBM, IKEA, Intel, Jack Daniels, Johnnie Walker, Johnson &, Johnson, JP
The magazine applied three filters to come up with its list. First, each brand had to have a value
greater than US$1 billion. Second, each had to derive at least a third of its revenue from outside its
home country and had to have significant distribution in the Americas, Europe, and Asia; and 3) it
had to make its marketing and financial data publicly available, thus excluding some private and
governmental brands such as candy-maker Mars and the BBC. Procter & Gamble, which spent
US$90 million last year advertising products such as Crest and Tide to U.S. Latinos, didn’t meet all
three criteria. For brand value, Business Week considered future earnings, then discounted projected
profits to a net present value based on its assessment of how likely those future profits are. See
page 33 of this report for a list of the 100 brands.
3
February 2005
7
Morgan, Kellogg’s, KFC, Kleenex, Kodak, Kraft, L’Oréal, Levi’s, Louis
Vuitton, Marlboro, McDonald’s, Mercedes, Merck, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft,
Mobil, Moet &, Chandon, Morgan Stanley, Motorola, MTV, Nescafé, Nestlé,
Nike, Nintendo, Nissan, Nivea, Nokia, Oracle, Panasonic, Pepsi, Pfizer,
Philips, Pizza Hut, Prada, Ralph, Lauren/Polo, Reuters, Rolex, Samsung
Electronics, SAP, Shell, Smirnoff, Sony, Starbucks, Sun, Tiffany &, Co., Time,
Toyota, Volkswagen, Wall St. Journal, Wrigley’s, Xerox, and Yahoo!.
Everybody shops at least some of these online retailers. 1-800-Flowers, All
Posters, Amazon, Bed, Bath, & Beyond, Berries, Best Buy, Bluefly, Buy,
Coach, Crate & Barrel, CVS, Dell, Diamond, Discovery Store, Drugstore,
eBags, eBay, eHobbies, Gap, Garnet Hill, Godiva, Good Guys, Hallmark,
Hancock Fabrics, Hershey’s, Hot Topic, iTunes, JC Penney, L.L. Bean, Lamps
Plus, Lands’ End, Musician’s Friend, Neiman Marcus, Netflix, NordicTrack,
Overstock, Personal, Creations, Reflect, Sears, Sharper Image, Simon
Delivers, Timberland, Toys ‘R Us, TShirt King, Victoria’s Secret, Western
Warehouse, Williams-Sonoma, Yankee Candle, Zales, and Zappos.
Using Hoover’s and similar sources, we identified the corporate sites of each of
the 100 global brands. Some well-known brands, like Marlboro, did not have
their own site, so we went to the parent company, Altria. We quickly found that:
Nearly two-thirds of the global brands are American. Sixty-three of the
most valuable brands maintain their headquarters in the U.S. (see Figure 2).
The other 37 companies come from Europe and Asia.
Global brands target both consumers and businesses. Market sectors
include Aerospace and Defense, Agriculture, Automotive and Transport,
Banking, Beverages, Business Services, Computer Hardware, Construction,
Consumer Products Manufacturers, Electronics, Energy and Utilities,
Financial Services, Food, Industrial Manufacturing, Leisure, Media,
Pharmaceuticals, Retail, and Telecom Equipment and Services.
The corporate sites typically do not transact business. At this stage, most of
these sites offer information about their company and are typically the first
place that a consumer or businessperson might look for information about a
company. Each site offers a wealth of details about the firm; most provide
product and service information; and many present a way to contact them,
register for updates, or get product support. We did find, however, that 14 of
the 100 companies did not offer further interaction online, thus making it
impossible to continue a relationship beyond that first hit on the web.
February 2005
8
Europe
30%
North America
63%
Asia
7%
Figure 2: Almost Two-Thirds of Global Brands Claim U.S. Citizenship
Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc.
Another two told visitors to pick up the phone rather than click their mouse.
Some companies were also repeatedly offline when we contacted them.
Obviously, the internet retailers’ sole reason for existence is selling their wares.
All 50 of them are obviously in the retail sector, and all are headquartered in the
United States.
Tip: Multicultural awareness is not just for consumers. Consider all the
stakeholders affected: business customers, employees, partners,
entrepreneurs, students, and shareholders.
Methodology for Site Review
In our review of the web sites of global brands:
We visited corporate or retail sites, not product URLs. Except for discreet
‚en Español‛ links, no firm highlighted the availability of non-English or
culturally tuned content for individual products. We did not dig into
individual product lines that may offer a more localized experience than the
corporate brand’s site. Our reasoning was that if the companies did not
emphasize the availability of non-English information and we didn’t easily
find any such content, others couldn’t find it, either. Finally, we did not
interview anyone at these companies, but only looked at their websites.
February 2005
Brand
H
Q
9
Sector
Entry Point to Content for U.S. Latinos
800Flowers
US
Retail
http://www.1800lasflores.com/
Bacardi
US
Beverage
http://www.bacardi.com/home/Default.aspx
ColgatePalmolive
US
Consumer
goods
http://www.colgate.com/app/Colgate/USES/HomePage.cvsp
Ford
US
Automotive
http://espanol.fordvehicles.com/index.asp?bhcp=1
Gillette
US
Consumer
goods
http://www.gillette.com/las/homepage.asp
Heineken
NL
Beverage
http://www.heineken.com/usa/es/ (no longer available)
Hertz
US
Automotive
http://es.hertz.com/index.cfm?pos=us
HSBC
UK
Financial
http://us.hsbc.com/sp/index.html
Kellogg‟s
US
Food
http://www.kelloggsenespanol.com/klog-esp/
L.L. Bean
US
Retail
http://www.llbean.com/customerService/shoppingFAQs/inla
ng/howto_es.html
L‟Oréal
FR
Consumer
goods
http://www.lorealusa.com/sp/home/home.aspx
(no longer available)
Nissan
JP
Automotive
http://www.nissanusa.com/espanol/HomePage/
Sears
US
Retail
http://www.searsespanol.com/
Sharper
Image
US
Retail
http://www.sharperimageespanol.com/
Toyota
JP
Automotive
http://www.toyota.com/espanol/index3.html
Yahoo!
US
Media
http://espanol.yahoo.com/
Table 1: Sites That Target the U.S. Latino Consumer (listed in alphabetic order)
We sought any ethnically “aware” content – language, discussion, images.
We looked for information aimed at American-resident audiences with
limited English proficiency (LEP) or who preferred interacting in other
languages. We considered how these sites alerted visitors to the availability
of such content. If we could not find translated or original in-language
content, we hunted for evidence of awareness in the form of press releases,
FAQs, and diversity notices.
Relatively speaking, Hispanics do count. Our initial search discovered more
sites translated into Spanish for American residents than for any other
language group, so we brought in bilingual Spanish-English speakers to help
us review the 100 URLs. Together we combed the Business Week 100 for
evidence of Latino-targeted marketing, finding the corporate sites of 800Flowers, Bacardi, Colgate-Palmolive, Ford, Gillette, Heineken, Hertz, HSBC,
Kellogg’s, L.L. Bean, L’Oréal, Nissan, Sears, Sharper Image, Toyota,
February 2005
10
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
Only English
Spanish
Chinese
French
Other
Portuguese
Figure 3: Spanish Websites Beat Other Second Languages by Wide Margin
and Yahoo (see Table 1).4 We found no corporate use of ‚Spanglish‛ (that is, a
macaronic brew of Spanish and English).
We looked for other evidence of multicultural marketing. In an admittedly
misbegotten attempt to prove the negative, we decided to cover all the bases
by googling the brand name plus ‚Español.‛ We came up with nada. Our
failure to find anything was, at worst, proof that there’s no other corporately
branded sites in Spanish or, at best, evidence that the companies have not
done a good job of posting metadata recognizable by internet search engines.
Finally, we also searched these brands for their offline ethnic efforts, yielding
some hits about special programs, marketing, and sports tie-ins.
Sixteen Companies Lead the Way to Latino-Aware Marketing Online
Twelve of the 100 global brands and four of the 50 e-tailers made a significant
effort to localize their U.S. sites for resident Spanish speakers. In general, the
English and Spanish sites employed the same look and feel, testament to the
power of templates in modern content management systems. In almost all cases,
the Spanish site was a subset of the English one (see Figure 4). In the following
4
Heineken and L’Oréal have decommissioned their Spanish sites in the last few months.
February 2005
11
Most
More than half
Less than half
Less than a quarter
Most everything
Figure 4: Companies That Target Latinos Tend to Offer Most of Site in Spanish
sections, we provide a top-level overview of the Spanish offering by these 150
companies. Then we drill down into a structured analysis of the sites.
The Best Global Brands for American Latinos
Five of these twelve branding icons’ sites stood out for offering at least more than
half or most of their content in Spanish (see Table 2):
Yahoo! provides the most service to American Latinos. Yahoo was the best
offered-in-Spanish website from the global brands, offering all the same
services in both English and Spanish. However, its standout PayDirect
remittance service has since been discontinued.
L’Oréal gives U.S. Hispanics its all. Literally. As far as we can tell, beauty
products company L’Oréal provides most of its U.S. English content in
Spanish. While not identical, each offers a full overview of the product lines.
Ford, Heineken, and Hertz excel. Although Heineken is incorporated in the
Netherlands, it had done quite a complete job of translating its U.S. website
into Spanish. Except for a few links, the English and Spanish sites were
identical. Michigan-based Ford and its Hertz car-rental subsidiary have done
a similarly good job.
February 2005
12
Bacardi
The English and Spanish sites look the same. However, registration,
contact information, and some navigation are in English.
ColgatePalmolive
The corporate site let you toggle back and forth between Spanish and
English. Except for Search, the sites look roughly equivalent.
Ford
The English and Spanish sites look and feel the same, with some sections
not translated into Spanish. Help is marred by an English-only contact.
Gillette
The sites look and feel the same, although much remains untranslated.
Heineken
The sites look and feel the same, with minimal differences – e.g., the
sweepstakes and Heineken‟s green room.
Hertz
The sites look and feel the same, including pages for renting a car. Hertz
appears to have taken a deep infrastructural approach to these offerings.
HSBC
The sites are very different – the Spanish site is much less graphical and
contains far less content. Only “Personal Services” is translated.
Kellogg‟s
The sites are different. However, the Spanish site was clearly designed for
Hispanics and shows consideration for the community.
L‟Oréal
While the Spanish site was available, the sites looked and felt the same.
The Spanish news was not current, but the English offering was. This site
is no longer available.
Nissan
The sites look and feel the same, but the news is different, focusing on
diversity issues. Rather than translate its tool for designing your own car,
Nissan provided Spanish annotations to its English configurator.
Toyota
The sites share similar structures, but the Spanish site has less content.
Interestingly, Toyota uses different photos of cars on the two sites.
Yahoo!
The sites seem almost interchangeable. This site is the most successful
adaptation by a global brand for the U.S. Latino market.
Table 2: Comparison of Global Brands’ English and Spanish Sites for U.S. Market
The others do a respectable job. The remaining companies do a lesser but
nonetheless good job of tailoring their sites to America’s Latino population.
They range from HSBC’s stark description of what they offer to the welldesigned and targeted Kellogg’s site.
While most of these sites serve the corporate mission of informing visitors about
the companies, some actually deliver value in Spanish online. At Hertz you can
rent a car; Ford lets you configure the car you want; and Yahoo! joint-ventured
with HSBC Bank to provide the now defunct PayDirect, an online alternative to
Western Union for remitting funds to family back home.
We did see some traces of Latino awareness at six other companies in the global
branding group. Morgan Stanley said that phone assistance was available in
Spanish; Nokia posted a downloadable copy of a translated user’s guide;
McDonald's provided some Spanish-language news items; and Amazon let
February 2005
13
Let‟s do some
business.
American car rental
giant lets visitors set the
locale to the U.S. and
language to Spanish.
Then they can execute
most functions in
Spanish, including
renting a car.
Build a car.
Nissan lets American
Latinos look at its entire
car line. An Englishlanguage configurator
with Spanish help lets
them design models to
their needs.
Send money –
soon!
Yahoo!‟s trademark
blue-and-white tabbed
site carries over into all
of its Spanish properties,
including one for U.S.
Latinos. This site
provides every function
that we expected to see,
including access to its
now discontinued
PayDirect remittance
service in Spanish.
Figure 5: How Some Brands Attract U.S. Residents Who Prefer Spanish
Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. and Hertz, Nissan, and Yahoo!
February 2005
14
visitors navigate an interesting mix of Spanish and English content in a section
called ‚Libros en Español.‛
As of February 2005, we could still find a link to Budweiser’s hispanicbud.com
with this notice in English: ‚Thank you for visiting Hispanicbud.com. This site is
currently being redesigned. In the meantime, please visit Budweiser.com or
Anheuser-Busch.com.‛
The Best of Internet Retailers for U.S. Latinos
Four of the 50 retailers invested in translating parts or all of their sites into
Spanish, although 15 have some information available for U.S. hispanohablantes,
far more than what other ethnicities can find. Two companies, 1-800-Flowers and
The Sharper Image, have gone the distance to create a complete shopping
experience that encompasses an entire transaction (see Table 3).
Retailer
1-800-Flowers
1800flowers
1800lasflores
L.L. Bean
llbean.com
Spanish FAQs
Sears
sears
searsespanol
Sharper Image
sharperimage
sharperimageespanol
Comparison
The Spanish site is very similar in design to the Englishlanguage one but with less content. It offers a Spanish
shopping cart (canasta de compras). The English home page
does not link to Spanish; instead, it lists 800lasflores with
other specialty sites owned by 800-Flowers.
We almost did not include this site because it is English,
except for a complete set of Spanish FAQs (plus French,
German, and Japanese) under “International Help.” We
often counsel firms to take this first step toward a translation
if they have to work with limited resources.
The Spanish site has a different design than the English one.
Latinos are offered fewer topics, with many links referring
back to the English-language site. As such, it is mainly a
directory for Spanish-speakers to the main U.S. English site.
We found it listed on a Customer Service page under
“Partner Sites, Catalogs, and Specialty Sites.”
The Spanish site for the U.S. has the same look-and-feel as
the English site, plus much of the same content and a
translated shopping cart. The “U.S. Español (US$)” site is
listed among its international sites.
Table 3: Comparison of Online Retailers’ English and Spanish Sites for U.S. Market
A Subjective Assessment: Does the Site Meet its Goals?
We always start with basic questions like ‚Who is the company? What does it
do?‛ Such simple questions help visitors determine whether they want anything
February 2005
15
Sharper Image offers Spanishspeaking American shoppers a
complete transactional experience.
L.L. Bean stops well short of a
Spanish-language shopping site, but
does offer FAQs to its Latino
American visitors.
1-800-Flowers sends Spanishspeaking visitors to a sister site that
offers full transaction support.
Sears offers Latinos a taste of much
of its site in Spanish, but often falls
back to the English catalog.
Figure 6: Online Retailers Offer Varying Levels of Spanish Support
Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. and Depicted Websites
February 2005
16
to do with a firm. They also form the core of one of the more stringent
regulations on internet activity, the European Union’s Directive on Distance
Selling. The EU drafted this directive to increase consumer confidence with a
minimum level of protection. Aimed at transactional sites with rules about
pricing, delivery, and cancellation, the directive’s first commandment is that
companies identify themselves.
In our thoroughly subjective application of this rule, we expanded the identity
requirement such that a visitor must be able to understand what it is that a
company does, what it sells, where to buy products, and how to contact the
company for more information (see Table 4). Most of our 16 Latinizing
companies excelled at conveying just what they do and what products they sell.
Most did a good job of telling you where you could find their products for sale.
In most cases, the weakest link was contacting the firm for more information.
Company
Understand
what it does
Figure out
what it sells
Find where to
buy its products
Contact it with a
question
1-800
FLOWERS
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Passable
Bacardi
Excellent
Excellent
Passable
Passable
ColgatePalmolive
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Ford
Excellent
Excellent
Poor
Not at all
Gillette
Excellent
Excellent
Not at all
Not at all
Heineken
Excellent
Excellent
Passable
Excellent
Hertz
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
HSBC
Good
Good
Excellent
Not at all
Kellogg‟s
Excellent
Excellent
Not at all
Good
L.L. Bean
Passable
Passable
Passable
Good
L‟Oréal
Excellent
Excellent
Poor
Not at all
Nissan
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Poor
Sears
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Passable
Sharper
Image
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Good
Toyota
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Not at all
Yahoo!
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Table 4: Subjective Assessment of Effectiveness of Spanish Content
Question: “How well does the Spanish-language site achieve these goals?”
February 2005
17
Tips for Helping Visitors Get More Information
Very little ‚best practices‛ information exists for multicultural marketing, so we
can excuse our best-of- ethnic-marketing sites for not being complete. We drilled
down into how you get more help at these sites, ranking them by perceived
helpfulness (see Table 5). The Spanish-language capabilities offered by these sites
ranged from sparse to complete, running the gamut from toll-free phone
numbers for Spanish to e-mail to Ask Jeeves-style customer-directed self service.
Most
Helpful
Somewhat
Helpful
Least
Helpful
Company
TollFree #
FAQs
E-mail
Link
Online
Form
Site
Search
SelfService
1-800
FLOWERS
SP
SP
SP
SP
EN
–
Colgate
SP
–
SP
SP
EN
–
Ford
EN
SP
–
EN
SP
SP
Sears
SP
EN
SP
SP
EN
SP
Sharper
Image
EN
SP
SP
–
SP
SP
Yahoo!
EN
SP
SP
SP
SP
EN
Bacardi
–
SP
EN
EN
–
–
Heineken
–
SP
–
SP
–
–
Hertz
EN
SP
–
SP
–
–
Kellogg‟s
SP
EN
SP
EN
–
–
L‟Oréal
–
SP
–
EN
SP
–
Nissan
EN
SP
–
–
EN
–
Toyota
SP
SP
–
EN
EN
–
Gillette
EN
–
–
EN
–
–
HSBC
EN
EN
–
EN
EN
EN
L.L. Bean
EN
SP
EN
–
EN
EN
 Increasing Level of Service 
Table 5: Helpfulness of Spanish Sites (“SP” Spanish, “EN” English )
We found that highly evolved sites offer the best of self-service. Ford supports an
Ask/Pregunta function enabled by Kanisa customer service software, allowing
customers to create free-form queries. However, this doesn’t help poor Kate –
Ford’s online 24x7 concierge – whose round-the-clock job apparently leaves her
little or no time to perfect her Spanish.
A Tough Test for Any Site: Interactivity and Transactions
Our sample of 150 companies represents two different goals:
February 2005
18
Company
More
Transactional
Less
Transactional
Tools
Registration
Transactions
1-800 FLOWERS
SP
SP
SP
Colgate-Palmolive
SP
SP
–
Hertz
SP
SP
SP
Nissan
SP
–
SP
Sharper Image
SP
SP
SP
Toyota
SP
EN
SP
Yahoo!
SP
SP
SP
Bacardi
SP
EN
EN
Ford
SP
EN
EN
Gillette
–
EN
EN
Heineken
–
SP
–
HSBC
–
EN
–
Kellogg‟s
–
EN
–
L.L. Bean
EN
EN
EN
L‟Oréal
EN
SP
–
Sears
EN
EN
EN
Table 6: Transacting in Spanish – or Not (“SP” for Spanish, “EN” for English)
Internet retailers need to sell. The sole reason for these websites is to sell.
Here, we looked for and then measured Spanish-language interactivity and
transaction support (see Table 6). The ease of purchasing something at the
site is easy enough to benchmark: Compare the completeness of the Englishlanguage help, transaction, and tool support with what the Spanish offers. In
most cases, companies have not built the Spanish online stores to the same
level of informational or transactional support as their English sites.
Global brands aim for corporate presence. The corporate websites of the 100
global brands do not support transactions. The translated sites offered several
different types of interactivity and transactions: 1) configurators for
designing cars at the auto sites, 2) registration at several sites, and 3) actual
business transactions at Hertz and Yahoo!. Some sites, like Heineken, offer
registrants something in return – more information, downloads of screensavers, or access to special areas. Registration supports longer-term
relationships with visitors, but also allows companies to analyze visiting
patterns in detail.
February 2005
URL
Archetypes
Languagebrand[country]
Brandlanguage
Brand/countrylanguage
Hierarchical or
Dynamic
19
Base Structure for These Brands
(all preceded by http://)
Brand
espanol.fordvehicles.com
Ford
es.hertz.com/index.cfm?pos=us
Hertz
espanol.yahoo.com/
Yahoo
www.1800lasflores.com/
800Flowers
www.kelloggsenespanol.com/klog-esp/
Kellogg‟s
www.searsespanol.com
Sears
www.sharperimageespanol.com/
Sharper
Image
www.gillette.com/las
Gillette
http://www.toyota.com/espanol/index3.html
Toyota
www.colgate.com/app/Colgate/USES/HomePage.cvsp
Colgate
us.hsbc.com/sp
HSBC
www.lorealusa.com/sp/home/home.aspx
L‟Oréal
www.nissanusa.com/espanol/HomePage/
Nissan
http://www.heineken.com/usa/es/
Heineken
www.bacardi.com/home/Default.aspx
Bacardi
http://www.llbean.com/customerService/shoppingFAQs/
inlang/shopfaq_es.html
L.L. Bean
Table 7: Different Approaches to Web Addresses for Latino Sites
Tip: The language-plus-locale approach in a web address indicates a wellstructured content management strategy that separates application logic,
presentation, and content.
We apparently caught Nissan in the middle of its Latino translation project. Its
configurator was in English, but the company did offer a cheat sheet, explaining
in Spanish how to use the English-language design-your-own-Nissan tool. While
less desirable than localizing the configurator, we recognize the resource
constraints that lead to such an approach; in fact, we have suggested this
workaround to companies without access to the source code or with time-tomarket constraints. Annotation is better than nothing.
Brands Use a Variety of Web Address Structures for U.S. Hispanic Sites
The 12 Latinizing global brands take several different approaches to URLs (see
Table 7). Some append ‚usa‛ to the brand name for the American sites, a less
desirable approach than putting the locale in the suffix. Others lead with the
language name, thus defeating the power of some browsers to automatically
February 2005
20
direct users to the country domain. Hertz employed the most transparent localebased naming, beginning with the site language and ending with the renter’s
country of residence.
https://mires.hertz.com/resik/index.cfm?homesite=es.
hertz.com&CtryResidence=us&PickupCSP=us
Hertz’s language plus locale approach indicates a well-structured content
management strategy that separates application logic, presentation, and content.
Maybe Not to Language, But Many Firms Show a Commitment to Diversity
Besides the 12 Latino-aware sites, few of the other most valuable global brands
demonstrated much awareness of Spanish or any other minority – with one
major exception: Many companies in this broader sample acknowledge the
existence of ethnic or minority groups through their diversity programs.
Most mention that they are “very committed” to minorities. They help
foundations dealing with minorities, or they donate to schools for minorities.
In classic philanthropic fashion, some companies have established their own
foundations – always with the name of the brand or the founder – that helps
minorities or some other cause. The most frequently mentioned groups are
Hispanic, Asian-American, and African-American.
Many display photos to demonstrate diversity. Many firms complement
their diversity statements with photos of minority employees.
Winners’ circle. Companies that have been awarded prizes for diversity
initiatives leverage the positive P.R. on their sites. For example, we learned
from our site visits that Citigroup, Dell, Hewlett Packard, McDonald’s,
Merck, Morgan Stanley, and Xerox have been flagged as good places for
Latinos to work by Hispanic Business magazine. Others have been lauded by
Hispanic Magazine’s annual award of its Hispanic Corporate 100, ‚the one
hundred companies providing the most opportunities to Hispanics.‛ Fortune
magazine publishes a list of America’s 50 best companies for minorities.
February 2005
21
Read Your e-Latino Radar




Can visitors easily find your Spanishlanguage content?
Does your Spanish-language website
accurately convey what the company
does and sells?
Can Latino visitors get online or
phone help in Spanish?
Does your site offer as complete an
interactive experience in Spanish as
it does in English?
Figure 7: Tip Sheet: Meeting the Needs of Latino Visitors
Tip: Well-constructed webforms can streamline your ability to effectively
respond to online inquiries, but you must also offer access to other
communication channels and set expectations for what Spanish-speaking
customers can realistically find in those channels.
Conclusions from Our Website Review
From our website review of the 100 most valuable brands and 50 top American
online retailers, we conclude that:
Few companies target ethnic communities. Opportunity awaits for
companies willing to invest in reaching the Latino community. Today, most
global brands and e-tailers treat the U.S. as a monolingual nation. Early
movers can cement loyalty in this marketplace.
Translated sites introduced their companies to U.S. Hispanic buyers. All of
the global brand and domestic online retailer sites in Spanish succeeded in
conveying what their companies do and sell, thus achieving the prime
February 2005
22
objective of many corporate websites – that is, being the first point of contact
for someone who wants to find out about a company.
Two of the Latino-aware sites delivered near-perfect results. Two U.S. web
retailers, The Sharper Image and 1-800-Flowers, did a great job in delivering a
Spanish-language experience to their customers. The global brands ranged
from flat translations of text to almost complete mirror images of the Englishlanguage sites. However, most of the international offerings fell short in help
or interactivity by comparison with mainstream U.S. English sites.
February 2005
23
E-Mail Response Survey
Websites and e-mail let companies directly communicate with their customers
and prospects. These online capabilities also provide a channel to nascent
markets, such as the U.S. Latino community. The results of our website review
demonstrate that many companies have yet to proactively capitalize on these
opportunities online. Our next task was to determine how well the companies we
reviewed reacted to messages sent in Spanish.
Who We E-Mailed and How We Collected Data
To follow up on our reviews of the basic communication, customer assistance,
and transactional support at both the websites of the 100 global brands and 50
online retailers, we mailed eight messages to each site. We followed this strategy:
Communication. Four of our eight missives were in English – a request for
more information about Spanish-language web content, a complaint about an
unanswered query, a compliment about the website, and a question about
where to buy the company’s product or service. We also sent four messages
in Spanish on the same topics. Each of the messages identified the sender as a
resident of the United States. We did not follow up with actual interviews
with these companies about their e-mail successes or failures.
Timing. For global brands, we sent our messages over two successive nonholiday Mondays in March 2004, in an effort to avoid having responses
queue up over a weekend. Similarly, for e-tailers, we sent our messages over
two successive non-holiday Mondays in July 2004.
Sources. Instead of clobbering Yankee Candle or Mattel with eight messages
from a bilingual [email protected], we drew from 16 different names
and separate e-mail addresses for each message. We hosted the e-mail
accounts on a variety of domains to ensure that companies received inquiries
from eight unique, albeit fictional, individuals.
Targets. Both global brands and e-tailers favored highly structured webforms
over e-mail (see Figure 8). Two of the 50 retailers and 16 of the global brands
prefer only telephone inquiries. Those more reticent firms resulted in
fractional response rates (for example, the data tables in the following
sections show 51.7 percent rather than an integer such as 52).
February 2005
24
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Online webform
Email
Global brands
e-tailers
Telephone
None
Figure 8: Most Companies Prefer Webforms over E-Mail
(as of March 2004 – some of the incommunicado companies have since improved)
Measurement. We calculated the delta in time between sending each
message and receiving a response. We noted the average lag in replying (in
days) as well as the quickest and slowest replies (in minutes and days,
respectively). We did not average automated responses in these calculations,
but instead measured the time to the actual reply.
We also scored each as being correct or wrong; a ‚correct‛ score means that
the company answered the actual question in the same language that the
question was asked. We spent more time, however, analyzing whether a
retailer responded at all rather than analyzing the correctness of the response.
The following sections show the English and Spanish text of the messages we
sent, plus a table that summarizes the responses (see Table 8).
Message 1: Request for Product Information
This e-mail asked about the availability of product information written in
Spanish but targeted at the U.S. market (see Table 9). We asked in both Spanish
and English. This simple request yielded the highest response rates to any of our
four Spanish messages, but the third-ranking of four for the English.
February 2005
25
Language
Spanish
English
Messages Sent
This is the number of messages we actually sent via
e-mail or through a webform. It is less than 100 because
some firms do not offer online communication.
Response Rate
Percentage of companies replying to the inquiry,
regardless of the language. It does not include
automated responses.
Responses in Spanish
Percentage of responses received in Spanish. For
English, this is always zero percent.
Automated Responses
Percentage of responses obviously sent from an auto
responder. All such canned responses were in English.
Correct Responses
Percentage of companies that answered our question.
Useful Responses
Percentage of the total number of messages sent for
companies that answered the question in the language
of the inquiry.
Response
Time
Average in Days
The average amount of time, in days, that it took to
respond to an inquiry. The average does not include
Automated Responses.
Minimum in
Minutes
The least amount of time it took a company to respond,
not including Automated Responses.
Maximum in
Days
The longest it took a company to respond to an e-mail,
not including Automated Responses.
Table 8: Guide to Interpreting Data Tables for Responses to Web Inquiries
“Good morning. My name is María Hernandez, I'm writing to you
because I would like to know whether you provide any product
information in Spanish for the U.S. market for your company. Could you
please let me know what's available? Thanks.”
“Buenos días. Mi nombre es Fernanda Méndez, les escribo porque me
gustaría saber si ustedes brindan información en español sobre
cualquiera de los productos de su empresa que se venden en EEUU.
¿Podrían por favor indicarme que productos hay disponibles? Muchas
gracias.”
February 2005
26
Global
Domestic
Global
Domestic
Spanish
Spanish
English
English
Messages Sent
90
48
90
48
Response Rate
37.8%
37.5%
41.1%
72.9%
48.9%
60.9%
0.0%
2.6%5
Automated Responses
14.4%
10.4%
15.6%
6.3%
Correct Responses
59.6%
56.5%
86.3%
92.1%
Useful Responses
17.8%
25.0%
48.9%
70.8%
Average in days
2.1
1.11
2.9
0.79
Minimum in minutes
2.0
153.0
8.0
45.0
Maximum in days
8.8
3.0
21.1
4.1
Response
Time
Table 9: How Companies Answered Requests for Information
Message 2: Minor Complaint
Our complaining message gently asked about the company’s failure to answer an
earlier inquiry which, to be honest, we never sent (see Table 10). Given the
response of the sample as a whole, we would file this request under the header
‚Quixotic Tasks.‛ In responding, some companies apologized for not answering,
while others noted that they had no record of the earlier correspondence and
suggested that we re-send the original. A few kept meticulous records of online
communications, indicating an evolved system for managing interactions.
Global
Domestic
Global
Domestic
Spanish
Spanish
English
English
Messages Sent
90
48
90
48
Response Rate
28.9%
45.8%
47.8%
72.9%
46.8%
53.8%
0.0%
0.0%
Automated Responses
23.3%
8.3%
17.8%
10.4%
Correct Responses
59.6%
61.5%
84.7%
85.0%
Useful Responses
17.8%
22.9%
55.6%
70.8%
Average in days
3.8
0.77
1.7
1.05
Minimum in minutes
1.0
32
6.0
15
38.4
2.27
9.9
3.60
Response
Time
Maximum in days
Table 10: How Companies Reacted to Complaints
5
Interestingly, J.C. Penney answered one of our English-language messages in Spanish.
February 2005
27
“Good morning. My name is Catherine Suarez. I requested some
information about your company a month ago, but I have not received a
response. Can you direct me to an e-mail address that someone will
answer? I look forward to a prompt answer. Thanks.”
“Buenos días. Mi nombre es Juana Avalos, el mes pasado solicité cierta
información sobre su empresa, pero no he recibido ninguna respuesta.
¿Puede usted indicarme una dirección de mail para que alguien
me conteste? Espero una pronta respuesta. Muchas gracias.”
Message 3: Compliment about Website
We told the recipients that they had done a great job on their websites, and asked
about more Spanish content for U.S. residents. The response rate was low for
both communities – no one knows how to take a compliment (see Table 11).
“Good morning. My name is Dolores Lopez. I would like to tell you that
your website is great. Can you tell me when you will add more content
for Spanish speakers in the United States? Thanks.”
“Buenos días. Mi nombre es Teresa García, les escribo para comentarles
que la página web de la empresa me pareció muy buena. ¿Podrían
decirme cuándo agregarán más contenidos para los hispanos que residen
en Estados Unidos? Muchas gracias.”
Global
Domestic
Global
Domestic
Spanish
Spanish
English
English
Messages Sent
89
48
90
48
Response Rate
22.5%
39.6%
41.1%
60.4%
48.8%
69.6%
0.0%
0.0%
Automated Responses
20.2%
8.3%
13.3%
12.5%
Correct Responses
58.5%
69.6%
81.6%
71.4%
Useful Responses
13.5%
31.3%
44.4%
52.13%
Average in days
1.8
0.86
3.0
0.87
Minimum in minutes
4.0
175
20.0
14
Maximum in days
5.8
2.32
8.1
4.48
Response
Time
Table 11: How Companies Reacted to Compliments
February 2005
28
Message 4: Where to Buy Products
This e-mail should be the money shot for any company – where can someone
buy its products. This question yielded the highest response rate of the four
English messages, but the lowest for Spanish (see Table 12).
“Good morning. My name is Paula Martinez and I live in Boston. Can
you please tell me where can I buy your products (or services)? Thanks.”
“Buenos días. Mi nombre es Jennifer Perez, vivo en Boston y me gustaría
saber donde comprar sus productos. Muchas gracias.”
Global
Domestic
Global
Domestic
Spanish
Spanish
English
English
Messages Sent
89
48
90
48
Response Rate
28.1%
54.2%
47.8%
58.3%
40.0%
53.3%
0.0%
0.0%
Automated Responses
22.5%
8.3%
14.4%
8.3%
Correct Responses
60.0%
70.0%
83.9%
81.3%
Useful Responses
16.9%
31.3%
52.2%
54.2%
2.8
0.90
1.8
0.89
Minimum in minutes
57.0
67
6.0
9
Maximum in days
13.7
3.59
9.8
4.52
Average in days
Response
Time
Table 12: How Companies Answered Questions about Where to Buy Products
Reviewing Data from the E-mail Responses
Whether we look at English or Spanish, the percentages speak volumes about the
low priority that companies place on web-originated interactions. We did find
several datapoints especially noteworthy, including the uneven performance of
companies with significant amounts of Spanish-language content, the question of
whether message content influenced the likelihood of getting an answer, and
whether webforms were more or less likely to elicit a response.
How Well Did Our Latino Content Champions Do with Spanish Queries?
Twelve of the 100 most valuable brands and four of 50 top online retailers
impressed us with the amount of content they offer on their websites to Spanish
February 2005
29
English
Company
Spanish
Msg1
Msg2
Msg3
Msg4
Msg1
Msg2
Msg3
Msg4
1-800Flowers
0
3
0
1
0
0
0
4
Bacardi
0
3
0
0
2
0
2
0
Colgate
3
3
3
3
0
0
2
2
Ford
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
Gillette
3
3
0
0
1
1
1
1
Heineken
3
3
0
3
2
2
2
2
Hertz
3
3
3
3
0
0
1
0
HSBC
3
0
3
3
4
4
4
4
Kellogg‟s
1
1
1
1
0
2
2
4
L.L. Bean
3
3
3
3
0
1
1
3
L‟Oréal
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
4
Nissan
0
0
3
1
1
2
0
0
Sears
3
3
3
3
0
4
4
4
Sharper
Image
3
3
3
3
4
0
0
4
Toyota
Yahoo!
Legend
Only a toll-free telephone number was available at the time.
0
3
3
3
2
1
2
1
0
Did not answer the inquiry at all.
1
Replied in English, but did not answer question.
2
Replied in Spanish, but did not answer question (often canned).
3
Answered the question, in English (even for Spanish queries).
4
Answered the question, in Spanish for Spanish.
Table 13: Sites with High Spanish Content Did Not Excel in Response
speakers in the United States. We expected a higher degree of Latino customer
responsiveness from these Hispano-savvy sites, but that did not play out (see
Table 13). We found that:
Ford and HSBC led the global brands in Spanish-language response. These
two companies were at opposite ends of the Spanish content spectrum; Ford
offered a large amount to HSBC’s more Spartan presence. Our two favorites
from the Spanish website content sweepstakes, Hertz and Yahoo!, did not do
as well as we expected them to in responding to non-English e-mails.
Four online retailers answered all questions in Spanish. Bluefly, HotTopic,
Overstock, and Toys ‘R Us had perfect scores, answering all four of our
messages in Spanish. Given the fact that only HotTopic answered all the
February 2005
30
English messages, we assume that the 100-percent response rate on the
Spanish for these companies resulted from the messages being special-cased
by their customer service departments.
Sixteen of the 50 e-tailers had perfect scores in English. All Posters, Bed
Bath & Beyond, Berries, Best Buy, Drugstore, eBay, Gap, Hot Topic, L.L.
Bean, Reflect, Sears, The Sharper Image, Timberland, Williams-Sonoma,
Yankee Candle, and Zappos replied to all of our English-language inquiries.
Several sites deserve honorable mention for a high degree of response: Bed
Bath & Beyond, Diamond, Neiman Marcus, Reflect, Sears, and WilliamsSonoma all answered some questions in Spanish. For example, Bed, Bath &
Beyond replied to some questions in Spanish, but used unedited machine
translation output that badly needed human intervention. None of the sites
with Spanish content answered all the questions.
When we saw that the response to the English where-to-buy inquiry was the
highest of the four Anglophone messages, we wondered whether the topic
increased the likelihood of the company responding. We examined our
hypothesis that the response rate to Spanish messages depended on the topic,
but our statistical test for independence shows no such correlation (see Figure 9
and Figure 10). The message topic did not influence whether they responded.
Some Companies Took Forever to Respond
Global firms that did respond to our Spanish messages took between one minute
and 38 days to respond. English responses arrived anywhere from several
minutes to 21 days later. Domestic online retailers took from less than a minute
to a few days to respond. On average for each language, companies took a day or
more to respond to queries (see Figure 11 and Figure 12). In reviewing the data,
we discovered:
No differences between language and type of e-mail. Considering the
median response time, we found no significant variation between the two
languages or among the types of message we sent.
A very wide range of values. In all cases, the average delay in responding is
longer than the median, thus pitting a larger number of short response times
against a few very long lag times. This asymmetric distribution throws off the
average, so we plotted the median to avoid misleading results.
February 2005
31
60
50
%
40
30
20
10
0
Request for
information
Complaint
E-mail
Compliment
Where to buy
Products?
Web form
Figure 9: Topic of Inquiry Had Little Impact on Whether Global Brands Replied
70%
60%
50%
%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Request for
information
Complaint
E-mail
Compliment
Where to buy
Products?
Web form
Figure 10: Topic of Inquiry Had Little Impact on Whether E-Tailers Replied
February 2005
32
14.0
response time (days)
12.0
10.0
Average
Minimum
Maximum
Median
8.0
6.0
4.0
2.0
0.0
Request for
Request for Complaint-S Complaint-E Compliment- Compliment- Where to buy Where to buy
information-S information-E
S
E
Products?-S Products?-E
Figure 11: Few Global Brands Responded in Real Time
6.0
response time (days)
5.0
Average
Minimum
Maximum
Median
4.0
3.0
2.0
1.0
0.0
Request for
Request for
Complaint-S Complaint-E Compliment- Compliment- Where to buy Where to buy
information-S information-E
S
E
Products?-S Products?-E
Figure 12: Few U.S. E-Tailers Responded in Real Time
February 2005
33
Useful responses are the key indicator. Reviewing the data across all 150
companies, what really stands out is the greater likelihood of receiving a
useful response if you communicate in English. In fact, useful responses to
queries in English, which fall well below a reasonable level of help by any
measure, still outscore responses to Spanish-language queries by two or even
three times to one.
Tip: Acknowledging an e-mail is only the first step in a process for
building online customer loyalty. Offer truly useful responses and
communicate along the way to let customers know how much time it will
take for you to get information to respond accordingly.
One Surprise: We Thought Webforms Would Have Fared Better
As noted earlier, the lion’s share of our sample (70 percent) uses webforms to
structure communication with visitors. Webforms let companies ask
correspondents for exactly the information they need to answer a question. They
typically request name, e-mail address, and perhaps the phone number of the
person making an inquiry. They often provide a pull-down menu that helps the
visitor categorize the issue about which they are writing. This self-taxonomy
allows the company to automatically route the message to the appropriate
department or customer service representative.
We hypothesized that companies were more likely to respond to messages sent
via webforms than to a more free-form e-mail. However, only two types of
Spanish queries in the statistical test supported our hypothesis, but not the other
two (see Figure 13 and Figure 14). None of the English queries confirmed our
assumption. Thus, we conclude that companies are no less likely to answer an
inquiry coming from a highly structured webform than they are to reply to a
free-form e-mail.
We Wanted to Know Whether They Did Better on the Phone
We often hear interactive voice response systems ask whether we want to
interact in Spanish. Twenty of the 50 U.S. online retailers suggested calling, while
two of the 12 global brands with significant amounts of Latino-targeted content
suggested Spanish call center agents:
February 2005
34
60
50
%
40
30
20
10
0
Request for
information
Complaint
Compliment
E-mail
Where to buy
Products?
Web form
Figure 13: Global Brand Response to English Messages via E-Mail vs. Webform
90%
80%
70%
%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Request for
information
Complaint
Compliment
E-mail
Where to buy
Products?
Web form
Figure 14: E-Tailer Response to English Messages via E-Mail vs. Webform
February 2005
35
Twenty U.S. retailers suggested that we call, so we did. In their e-mail
responses nearly half of the 50 e-tailers gave us a phone number to call. We
added a complicating factor: We wanted U.S. delivery with a credit card
issued to a non-U.S. address. Because the online forms require a U.S. billing
address, we could not order products without some human help (see Table
14). IVR refers to interactive voice response (the automated system for
routing calls) and whether it offers a Spanish option; CSR is shorthand for
customer service representative. Orange-highlighted sites provided the most
helpful Spanish customer service.
Toyota and Nissan invite calls in Spanish. You could call Toyota asking for
help in Spanish – and they even reinforce the message (our underlining): ‚Si
requiere asisténcia en Español, por favor llame a nuestro Centro de
Asisténcia al Cliente, al 1-800-GO-TOYOTA (1-800-468-6968). Servicio
disponible en Español.‛6 However, HSBC warns Spanish-speaking web
visitors to find a physical branch – its toll-free number is answered only in
English. Nissan is less clear on what visitors should expect.
Conclusions from Our Online Communications Experiment
Based on the results of sending messages to the websites of the 100 most valuable
global brands and to 50 top U.S. online retailers, we conclude that most
companies need to invest in improving their online communications.
Specifically, they should:
Assign a higher priority to web communications. Low overall response
rates, long latencies in answering, and the small percentage of useful
responses bear witness to underinvestment in online customer service.
Use tools to improve response. Most of the companies proffered webforms
as the way to communicate. However, our inquiries submitted via a webform
were not no more likely to receive an answer than an e-mail sent to a posted
‚Contact Us‛ address.
‚If you need assistance in Spanish, please call our Customer Service Center at 1-800-GO-TOYOTA
(1-800-468-6968). Service is available in Spanish.‛ Toyota could really one-plus its effort by
reserving the 1-800-VA-TOYOTA.
6
February 2005
36
IVR
Company
800-Flowers
EN

SP

What Happened When We Asked for Help in Spanish
At LasFlores, IVR in Spanish with Spanish-speaking CSRs.
Bed Bath &
Beyond


Transferred to Spanish-speaking CSR (in New Jersey).
Best Buy


IVR choice for a human operator constantly busy.
Bluefly


Told to call back later for a Spanish-speaking CSR.
Crate & Barrel


Transferred to Spanish-speaking CSR (in Illinois).
eBags

GAP


Transferred to Spanish-speaking CSR (in California).
Hot Topic


English IVR offers Spanish-speaking CSR (in California).
Lamps Plus


Transferred to Spanish-speaking CSR (location unknown).
Lands‟ End


Requested a Spanish-speaking CSR, but the call center
could not accommodate our request (in Wisconsin).
LL Bean


could not accommodate our request.
Neiman Marcus


could not accommodate our request (in Texas).
Nordic Track


IVR suggested visiting the website. We could not connect
with a human at the number.
Overstock


Requested a Spanish-speaking CSR and was told that
someone would call back. We are still waiting…
Reflect


IVR said it could not accept our call at this time and
suggested sending an e-mail instead.
Sharper Image


Toys „R Us


IVR choice for Spanish tells you to send an e-mail to Jason.
Zales
Transferred to Spanish-speaking CSR (in New Jersey).
 Transferred to Spanish-speaking CSR (in Canada).
 
Transferred to Spanish recording, then given the choice of
a Spanish-speaking CSR (location unknown).
 
Transferred to a Spanish recording.
Zappos
 
Victoria‟s Secret
Transferred to Spanish-speaking CSR (location unknown).
Table 14: What Do Companies Do When Spanish-Speaking Latinos Call Them?
Recognize that inquires will not all be in English. The low rate of English
response came as no surprise to us, but we were pleased to see the number of
companies that tried to be helpful to our hispanohablante correspondents.
Market proactively to Latinos and other ethnicities. American companies
prefer operating in English. While the cost of addressing the Latino market
may seem prohibitive, in the long run returns will justify the investment.
February 2005
37
Improve Online Communications
Don’t: Under-invest in online customer service
Do: Use webforms to improve response
Don’t: Take forever to respond, either to a
webform or an e-mail
Do: Take the time to offer a useful response
Don’t: Use English to respond to an inquiry in
another language
Do: Respond honestly if you cannot
accommodate the customer’s language needs
rather than ignore the inquiry
Don’t: Forget to tie online to other channels
Do: Set appropriate expectations for customers
seeking Spanish assistance beyond the web
Figure 15: Tip Sheet: Improving Online Communications
Tie web communications to other channels. Low response to Spanish
inquiries points to the bigger issue of inadequate investment in e-mail
response. Regardless of language, up to 40 percent of English buyers and 60
percent of Spanish customers are likely to be discouraged if they receive no
response. Left unchecked, this disconnect will cost companies much more in
labor and potential customer satisfaction than investing in multilingual FAQs
and better e-mail response.
February 2005
38
E-mail Responses
Whether at the office or at home, we answer the phone, almost compulsively.
When we receive a fax, we at least glance at it to see what needs to be done. We
open our first-class letters and FedEx packages as soon as we get them. E-mails
and webform communication, perhaps due to sheer volume or a fear of stealth
viruses, fail to elicit the same read-and-respond reflex. While we all occasionally
overlook an e-mail, a systematic (or systemic) failure to respond to inquiries
solicited from Web site visitors can seriously compromise returns expected from
web investments.
Why Don‟t Companies Respond to Web Inquiries?
Our experiment with the 150 websites and e-mail response showed that many
companies do not reply to messages sent to them online, either by e-mail or
through webforms. We can think of a few reasons why they do not.
No staff, inadequate staff, or low priority. Many online efforts remain
understaffed outside the core development team. Customer service, content
creation and editing, and especially multilingual operations remain at a
premium in companies still trying to figure out how the web fits into their
communications plan or how to link web inquiries to sell-through in their
marketing budgets. Finally, from the dismissive tone of some responses,
Spanish-speaking Americans have yet to show up on the radar screens of the
most valuable global brands.
Broken or non-existent process. The [email protected] address looks
out over a yawning chasm of missing staff, procedures, and workflow.
Should messages to that account go to sales, customer service, or the
webmaster? Many messages submitted via webforms check into Siebel, never
to emerge again.
Concern about spam and viruses. The daily barrage of spam messages and
the regular emergence of data-destroying viruses spook many system
administrators. That angst might explain some delay in responding, but it
shouldn’t keep companies from answering once (if?) they’ve vetted the
messages. Finally, the very real threat of viruses and the maddening reality of
spam only confirm that webforms are the best way of communicating with
site visitors.
February 2005
39
The Quality of Responses in Both Languages Varied Greatly
When our sample companies did reply to our English inquiries, they were civil,
more or less grammatical, and usually helpful. Replies to the Spanish messages
covered a broader spectrum, ranging from rude to very courteous. Some firms
pointed us to their website for a Spanish-speaking nation like Mexico, noting that
while it is not targeted at American Latinos, it would give visitors a good idea of
what their products do. Others suggested calling their customer service centers
or visiting physical branches where they would find Spanish-speaking staff.
In the following sections, we concentrate on the responses to our Spanishlanguage questions. We asked our Spanish-speaking researchers to pick their
favorite and least favorite e-mails and why. In all cases, we either list a
representative part of the text of the message or the entire message. We removed
salutations, some paragraph breaks, and some text for reasons of space. We also
deleted signature lines and reference numbers to protect the innocent, although
we did not anonymize the websites. In all cases, we look for best and worst
practices to help companies improve their ability to respond to customer
inquiries online. Spanish is just the proxy for a bigger issue – that the response
rate in English was 50/50 at best, with a much lower level of correct or useful
responses to potential customers making their first contact – ultimately leading
to those customers’ their first bad impressions.
Note that we did not analyze the quality of the Spanish replies very carefully,
although some malapropisms, bad grammar, and obvious machine translation
caused chuckles. However, we saw similar problems in English responses,
testament to the lack of resources, editing, control, and attention to branding. In
most cases, we see that companies could avoid many of these common errors by
bringing in language and culture specialists to review their e-mail response
processes and systems.
We saw a lot of variation in how customer service representatives at these
companies answered. Some did a great job, but many failed to offer their
correspondents anything useful. We extracted best and worst practices to guide
companies toward better online response (see Table 15).
February 2005
40
Problem
What Happened
How to Fix This Problem
The company did not answer
messages sent to them via their
webforms or e-mail.
The reasons for failure to respond suggest the
solutions. See “Best Practices for Managing
Inquiries from the Web.”
The company answered a different
question than what we asked. We
saw this in both English and
Spanish responses to our Spanish
inquiries.
Have someone literate read and evaluate what
response is required for the message. See “Best
Practices for Managing Inquiries from the Web.”
The company suggested – in
English – that the e-mailer send
the message again, but in English.
One customer service
representative mentioned a URL
for free translation, not realizing
he could have used it himself.
Realize that the person might be writing in
another language because he does not speak or
read English well enough to feel comfortable
making a purchase decision at the site. Some
companies made that suggestion in Spanish –
that response is better, but not as good as
answering the question.
The company answered the
question as if it were in English,
without acknowledging that the
original message had been sent in
Spanish.
This is a special case of the clueless answer
phenomenon. If the person asked the question in
Spanish, chances are the person is not
comfortable communicating in English. Answering
in English will not meet that prospective
customer‟s needs.
Bad
Spanish
The company answered using
ungrammatical, misspelled, rude,
English-peppered, unedited
machine translation, or otherwise
flawed language that might turn
off Spanish speakers.
Machine translation has its place, but respectful
customer relations require more polished
communications. Bring specialists into your call
center to help with these responses. The language
services industry comprises thousands of
companies worldwide who can help (see GALA
for a starting list of language service providers).
Keyboard
101
The company responded with “en
espanol” without any diacritical
marks on the characters that
require them.
Spanish requires the use of accent marks, such as
the ñ in “español.” Make sure that your customer
service representatives use their keyboards with
international settings.
The company opened or closed
each message with a salutation in
English, such as “Thank you for
choosing MyCompany,” or “Please
use the reply button when
responding.”
Create template responses or boilerplates in the
language of the response. Several of the
companies responded with the entire message in
Spanish, including the titles of the customer
service representative and the department where
he works.
The company said that it cannot
help the questioner online in
Spanish, but to call its call center.
We did. Details follow.
Aside from important cost considerations, sending
someone to the phone undermines the continuity
of the web experience. Follow the lead of
companies like The Sharper Image or 800Flowers in keeping the prospect online in Spanish
as long as possible.
No
Answer
Wrong
Answer
Clueless
Answer
Oblivious
Answer
Boilerplate
Call Us
Table 15: Some Problems Show Up Repeatedly in Company Responses
February 2005
41
Many Companies Answered Spanish Inquiries in English
Quite a few firms responded correctly to our Spanish inquiries about content, but
did so in English. Even companies with Spanish content at their corporate
websites – Colgate, Ford, HSBC, and Nissan among them – chose not to show off
their Latino chops by replying in Spanish. Incidentally, Colgate’s pointer to its
website for Hispanics was news to us. In our original review of the ColgatePalmolive main corporate website, we found no reference to the existence of this
‚generic‛ Spanish site.
“Thank you for contacting us with your question. Your interest in our
company and our products is greatly appreciated. Colgate-Palmolive has
a website already for Hispanics in Spanish. It is
www.mundocolgate.com. Hope you will visit and let them know your
comments.” *Colgate-Palmolive]
Honesty Is the Best Policy
Several companies confessed to resource limitations that kept them from offering
Spanish content or from responding at all. For example, Merrill Lynch
acknowledged its inability to handle heavy e-mail volume. Johnson & Johnson
admitted to a resource deficit that we would probably find at most firms.
However, both companies did read and respond to the substance of our e-mail.
“Thank you for your Merrill Lynch inquiry. We have been experiencing
unusually high e-mail volume in recent weeks, and we apologize for our
delayed response. Your feedback regarding the addition of Spanish
language content is important to us. It has been forwarded for further
review so we may improve our website according to the needs of our
clients. We appreciate the opportunity to assist you.” *Merrill Lynch+
“Thank you for your message. At this time, we have no plans to
translate the jnj.com website into other languages due to resource
limitations. We appreciate the suggestion and will reconsider this
opportunity in the future.” *Johnson & Johnson+
Danone’s (Dannon in the U.S.) customer service representative owned up to
another basic issue – his Spanish wasn’t good enough to respond. Interestingly,
the American Consumer Division he referenced followed up and alerted us to
something about which we had no idea – a shortage of yogurt not yet reported in
the American media.
February 2005
42
Subject
El mes pasado solicité cierta información sobre su empresa, pero no he recibi...
Discussion Thread
Response (Webmaster (JW))
18 03 2004 09:22 AM
Luis,
Gracias por su interés en Reuters y le ruego disculpe el retraso. He mirado las
transacciones de este correo, y no veo ningún mesaje previo en la historial. Si usted
puede indicarme el asunto de su correo, o remitirme el original, intentaré ayudarle.
En términos de información sobre la empresa, tenemos a su disposición nuestra web
empresarial http://about.reuters.com que provee información acerca de Reuters, pero
en inglés. Para informaciones generales en español, ofrecemos el siguiente pdf:
http://about.reuters.com/spain/corp_background_feb_03_es.pdf
Si necesita más información, no dude en contactarme.
Atentamente,
Reuters Webmaster
Figure 16: Reuters Manages a Threaded Discussion for Web Communications
Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. and Reuters
“We acknowledge receipt of your e-mail and thank you for your interest
in the DANONE Group. Please excuse us for replying your message in
English, but my written Spanish is very poor. Your message has been
forwarded to our American Consumer Division and you should receive a
reply soon.” *Danone+
The Good: Some Companies Did a Great Job Answering in Spanish
We were very impressed with the responses of some firms, not just for the
obvious care they took in responding but also in their systematic handling of
incoming messages (see Figure 16).
Reuters and Shell are two good examples of companies that have apparently
dedicated sufficient resources to their online presence: They captured, tracked,
responded, and followed up to our replies. The systems they have put in place
focus on making sure that they answer the correspondent’s question.
Other firms were less systematic, but stood out for other reasons. For example,
Kraft took the trouble to answer our e-mail in both English and Spanish
(although they don’t offer any product catalog in any language).
February 2005
43
“Thanks for visiting our Web site. We appreciate your interest in our
products. We don't currently have a product catalog or price list. Our
products are purchased by authorized retail dealers to be sold to
consumers in retail stores. Please add our site to your bookmarks, and
visit us again soon!
¡Gracias por visitar a nuestra página en la Internet! Actualmente no
tenemos un catalogo or lista de precios de nuestros productos. Nuestros
productos son comprados al por menor por distribuidores autorizados
para vender a consumidores. Favor de agregar nuestra página,
http://www.kraftfoods.com/ a su lista de favoritos en la Internet y
¡visítenos de nuevo muy pronto!” [Kraft]
Panasonic’s apology for not responding to our earlier non-existent e-mail made
us feel bad about our fictitious complaint. Their Spanish-language reply
provided us lots of information about how and when to contact them (we
deleted the hours of operation at the ellipsis and a closing apologia). This is an
example of excellent form in responding to a website visitor’s inquiry.
“Disculpe el inconveniente que le hemos causado, por razones ajenas a
nuestra voluntatd no fue posible el contestar a su email. En estos
momentos no tenemos datos de su email anterior, si es posible envienos
sus preguntas y dudas y estaremos dispuestos en ayudarle. Si necesita
obtener asistencia adicional con relacisn a su producto, puede ponerse en
contacto con nuestro Centro de Servicio al Cliente de Panasonic al (800)
211-PANA … Un representante estara disponible para asistirlo.”
[Panasonic]
Some companies without Spanish content for American visitors suggested
visiting subsidiary websites in countries like Mexico. For example, computer
maker Sun referred our message to its Mexican director of technical marketing.
Given that 65 percent of U.S. Latinos are of Mexican heritage, this approach won
points for its nuanced workaround to limited resources.
“Tenemos información en español de algunos (casí todos ) nuestros
productos. Qué te interesaría saber para que busquemos asignarte una
persona que te contacte directamente y te proveea con la información que
necesitas.”*Sun Microsystems+
February 2005
44
Similarly, Hewlett Packard, Kodak, and Microsoft sent visitors to a Spanishlanguage site. However, instead of redirecting the visitor to a specific country
site or store, they suggested that the visitor find and select a Spanish-speaking
country site to visit through the list of countries at their global gateway. HP
delicately skirted the question of Puerto Rico’s political status in its response.
“The easiest way to get information in Spanish is to go to our hp.com
website, and in the top right-hand corner, select a Spanish-speaking
country (like Puerto Rico). The products available there may be
slightly different from what is on our website, but the product
information will be the same.” [Hewlett-Packard]
“Gracias por su visita a nuestro sitio Internet y por su pregunta.
Lamentablemente, la página web de los estados unidos no habra ninguna
página en español. Necesita ir a www.kodak.com.mx para informarse de
nuevo productos de Kodak. Si tiene otras preguntas, asegúrese de volver
a visitar nuestro sitio Internet; como siempre estamos poniendo
información para mejorar nuestro apoyo.” [Kodak]
Finally, Anheuser-Busch answered our questions, but it left its friendly closing in
English – ‚Your Friends at Anheuser-Busch.‛
“Teresa, nuevamente le queremos hacer saber que fue un placer el recibir
su correo electronico. Si tuviera algun otro comentario o pregunta
porfavor contactenos. Siempre apreciamos el oir de nuestros amigos.
Gracias por enviar un correo electronico a Anheuser-Busch.
Your Friends at Anheuser-Busch
1-800-DIAL-BUD (1-800-342-5283)” *Anheuser-Busch]
The Bad: Some Firms Need to Get Their Customer Service Act Together
Many firms failed to answer our inquiries. Others replied, but asked us to
communicate in English or to try a less than helpful alternative. Part of the
response gap can be traced to the luck of the draw – which customer service
representative (CSR) answers a prospect’s inquiry determines the quality and
completeness of the reply. For example, one Polo rep suggested we contact the
company again in English when we asked for more information in Spanish.
February 2005
45
“We regret that we are not able to translate your message. Please resend
your message in English and we will be happy to assist you with your
request. Thank you for your interest in Polo Ralph Lauren.” *Polo+
However, the same company perked up in answer to our compliment about its
website. The first CSR passed on the question, while the second went to the
trouble of translating his answer – and even apologizing for his poor Spanish
(but not for his probable use of a machine translation tool). This combined
English-Spanish response showed up in a single message.
“Thank you for your interest in Ralph Lauren. We appreciate your
interest in our website www.polo.com. We will be receiving our new
summer merchandise beginning in April. You may find some styles that
appeal to the Hispanic residents of the United States.
Gracias por su interés en Ralph Lauren. Apreciamos su interés en
nuestro Web site www.polo.com. Recibiremos nuestra mercancía nueva
del verano que comienza en abril. Usted puede encontrar algunos estilos
que abroguen a los residentes hispánicos de los Estados Unidos.
Thank you for contacting Polo.com. Please feel free to contact us with
any other questions.
Gracias por Polo.com que entra en contacto con. Siéntase por favor libre
entrarnos en contacto con con cualquier otra pregunta.
I apologize for my poor translation.
Me disculpo por mi traducción pobre.”*Polo+
Some responses were well meaning, but not that well thought out. For example,
Tiffany helpfully pointed our Spanish-seeking correspondents to a Spanishspeaking location. However, its English-language suggestion to contact its store
in Mexico might not be the best solution for our Boston-based correspondent.
“In order to best assist you, please contact our Tiffany & Co. location
in Mexico:
Avenida Presidente Masaryk
Colonia Polanco
11560 Mexico D.F.
011-52-55-5281-5222” *Tiffany+
February 2005
46
Finally, we did receive a few responses that worried us a bit from a Can Spam
perspective. For example, Philips didn’t bother to answer our e-mail, but
presumptively opted us into their customer communications program and sent
us an English-language survey to complete. Not replying to our e-mail, but then
adding us to their prospect database and asking us questions in English left a
sour taste in our mouth.
The Ugly: English Sí, Español No!
Among the companies not likely to win awards from the Hispanic community is
Exxon-Mobil, whose response to our Spanish e-mail was short but not too sweet.
“English please. Thank you” *Exxon-Mobil]
Microsoft was less terse in its answer, but clearly not plugged into the Latino
opportunity inside the United States. Don’t look for Ventanas XP Pro anytime
soon for the U.S. Latino market. Since the e-mail was in Spanish, Redmond’s
suggestion that our correspondent ask the question again in English doesn’t bode
well for a successful interchange.
“At this time, our customer representatives are only able to respond to
questions written in English. We are sorry for the inconvenience. Please
visit http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/ and check under Contact
Information for Microsoft subsidiary contact information. If you are able
to reply back in English, we will be glad to assist you further.”
[Microsoft]
Motorola treated us to a blast from the past with an all uppercase response,
indicating either that its customer service representative was using an old
Teletype terminal or DEC VT55, had yet to master the shift-lock key, or was
having a particularly bad day.
“YOUR QUESTION HAS NOT BEEN RECIEVED BY AN AGENT
YET! PLEASE READ THIS EMAIL FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON
FORWARDING YOUR QUESTION TO ONE OF OUR
CUSTOMER SERVICE AGENTS.” *Motorola+
Ericsson told us that it doesn’t provide Spanish content at its U.S. website
because it’s not the official language of the country. Furthermore, the company’s
representative suggested that if we are really interested in getting our question
answered, we should just ask it in English. This dismissive sniff that Spanish is
February 2005
47
not the official language could spell trouble for Ericsson’s U.S. business unit as it
tries to sell into the rapidly growing Latino mobile phone market.
“Thank you for contacting Ericsson. If you are referring to the country
site in the US at http://www.ericsson.com/US then we are afraid we will
not put any content in Spanish due to that it’s not the official language
of the country. Please don’t hesitate to get back to us (in english) if you
feel we have misunderstood your question.” *Ericsson+
Mattel made us wonder why they bothered to post its e-mail address. We guess
that they’ve gotten so used to talking to Barbie – and not having her answer –
that they assume all communication is unidirectional. However, you do have to
admire the company’s desire to set expectations, however low.
“Please be advised that you will NOT receive a response.” *Mattel+
Best Practices for Managing Inquiries from the Web
Why should you answer customer inquiries coming in from the web? The web is
often the first step in establishing a customer relationship. This may be old news
to some, but it bears repeating as companies resurrect plans to pump up their
internet presence and improve their online customer service. Whether you are
creating a customer interaction portal or aiming for increasing customer
intimacy, bidirectional communication will be essential for meeting customer
expectations, preparing for markets like the European Union where transparency
in distance marketing is required, and, in the final analysis, because your mom
taught you better.
From the responses of these brands to our web-originated queries, we can
suggest some positive e-mail and webform response practices that can help
convert prospects to customers and increase the loyalty of existing customers:
Acknowledge the inquiry. Posting an e-mail address or offering a webform
for submitting questions implies your interest in communicating with your
prospects and customers. Make it a two-way discussion. You can use an auto
responder, but remember to set expectations about the ‚real‛ response – for
example, when should the correspondent expect to really hear back from one
of your flesh-and-blood customer service representatives?
February 2005
48
Manage Your Web Inquiries
Critical actions for building better customer
relationships via the web:






Acknowledge
Answer
Leverage
Normalize
Research
Cost-justify
Figure 17: Tip Sheet: Building Customer Relationships via the Web
Try to answer the inquirer’s question. If you can reply beyond a pre-written,
automatically generated reply, do so. Try to answer the inquirer’s question –
a request for information is why he wrote in the first place. Ideally, answer in
the language of the inquiry. Invest in good translation plus some editing and
workflow tools to ensure that the answer makes sense whichever language
you choose for responding. If you can’t answer in the language of the
inquiry, you should still answer the question in English – but apologize.
Leverage technology and process. A few companies in our sample
demonstrated a systematic approach to managing online interactions with
their prospects and customers. Use the tools that you have in-house and
develop processes to integrate what happens on the web with the rest of your
business.
Normalize your customer service. Several firms demonstrated a wide range
of variability in their responses to our e-mail. Fix that problem with better
training, formalizing call center procedures, routing inquiries to the best
qualified customer service representative, and by regularly updating FAQs
with more questions and more complete answers. Use a customer
relationship management (CRM) or other customer service database to store
February 2005
49
and analyze such interactions. Make sure you put whatever replies you
create under the control of a content management system, lest your answers
get outdated or off-brand with the passage of time (see ‚Rage Against the
Content Management Machine,‛ Apr03).
Research your markets. Know which market segments and ethnic groups
matter to your company. Your firm is probably already spending a lot of
money on domestic segment-based marketing, but you are probably missing
some multicultural audiences. Redirect some of your research spending to
understanding growing non-English markets and invest accordingly so that
you can respond intelligently.
Make the case. Before spending any money or time on improving your
ability to respond, rehearse your return on investment speech to your boss.
First, note the already classic justification that online customer service costs
much less than telephonic call centers, often by orders of magnitude.
Secondly, remember that the web is where many prospects will find you.
Once they do, your company’s ability to respond to inquiries will ensure the
return on investment.
February 2005
50
Strategy
Knowing that the opportunity to market to American Latinos is largely
untapped, what can you do to improve your own company’s ability to reach this
critical demographic? This section lays out a program for meeting the needs of
this growing market. You can apply these recommendations to any multicultural
market you choose to target.
Adding Ethnic Awareness – and Success – to Any Brand
In reviewing ethnically targeted initiatives at global brands, two things struck us:
1. Traditional channels. Global brands mostly rely on conventional outlets –
print, TV, and radio – to reach Latinos residing in the United States. The same
companies extensively use the web to reach English speakers, so it follows
that the web is a key venue for reaching Spanish speakers.
2. Unidimensional targeting. When global brands do address Latinos online,
most do so indirectly by focusing on cultural diversity. Even those that get
past this politically correct practice – including some of our Latino 16 –
cannot get past the notion that U.S. Hispanics might want to do something
more than buy stuff. Beyond the consumer, acknowledge other important
Latino stakeholders: employees, entrepreneurs, voters, or investors.
In the following sections we lay out a stepwise approach to reaching more
Latinos online, while reinforcing messaging across channels (see Figure 18).
Step 1: Research – Study, Segment, and Target Desirable Populations
American Latinos comprise a demographic segment that has all of the
characteristics of any other; they buy, work, vote, own businesses, take medicine,
have kids, save money, and go to school. In short, they do everything other
Americans do. Some Latinos prefer Spanish over English, others like the web
more than TV. Using traditional mass media and an English-only website
guarantee that messages to multicultural communities will reach only a part of
your intended audience. To speak to the rest will require translating more than
the ‚About Our Products‛ and ‚Buy Now‛ sections of your website.
Remember that Latino is a nuanced demographic. Segmentation for Latino
or other linguistic markets should be no different than what you would do
February 2005
51
Six Steps to Success






Study, segment and target desirable
populations for ethnic marketing
Develop a deliberate cross-channel
multicultural plan
Use in-house and external resources
where it makes sense
Invest in the right mix of materials for
your audience, products, and market
competition
Use corporate technology solutions
Measure effectiveness using
mainstream tools
Figure 18: Tip Sheet: Foundation to Support Multicultural Marketing
for any population. Ethnicity adds language and cultural issues to the
complex equation that defines buyer behavior – psychographic factors like
religion, family, income, career, education, hobbies, entertainment, dwelling,
and politics. Tweak your existing demographic measurement tools and
algorithms to segment this large population into usable clusters.
Create full-service website and technology strategies. Corporate sites need a
range of content to satisfy multicultural consumers, shareholders, and
employees (see Table 16). Regulatory compliance for health and safety plus
news about self-funded pensions means introducing Spanish to corporate
intranets as well. Carry it even further into internal operational systems. Inlanguage websites, procedures, manuals, and enterprise technology can help
you improve the effectiveness of operational, resource planning (ERP), and
decision support systems in densely Latino parts of the country.
What will this work cost? Multicultural marketing, employee services, and
shareholder information should be part of your mainstream planning efforts. In
some cases, the law demands it (see ‚Translation – It’s the Law!‛ Apr04). You
February 2005
52
Web
U.S. Latino
Consumer
Corporate Message
(Not Comprehensive)
E
N
S
P
Print
E
N
S
P
Radio
E
N
S
P
TV
E
N
S
P
Branding
Acquire, retain, and upsell
customers (CRM)
Transactions
Voter &
Concerned
Citizen
Public relations
Diversity issues
Positions on public affairs
News to media
Shareholder
Financial news
SEC compliance
Business
owner
Communicate with partners
and suppliers
Transactions
Employee
Human resources
Safety and health
Government regulations
Retiree information
Table 16: A Task List for Reaching Latinos through Different Channels
may choose not to act soon on any of these opportunities, but at least think about
it and summarize the reasons for your inaction. Likely issues are budget, timing,
staffing, and competing priorities. With this rational already prepared, you will
be better able to answer critics or shareholders when the question of
multicultural marketing arises.
Step 2: Strategy – Develop a Deliberate Cross-Channel Multicultural Plan
With the full-service website plan completed, companies should:
Create a unified ethnic strategy. Pay as much attention to ethnic marketing
and sales efforts as you would to any other strategic effort, integrating the
web with print, broadcast, and live events (see Figure 19).
Publicize your efforts across channels. When you roll out your website,
make sure that people know about it. Reference the site in your print and
broadcast advertising; register with search engines to pick up the fact that it’s
your brand in Spanish; and make sure that Spanish-speaking visitors to your
corporate homepage can quickly learn what you can offer them.
February 2005
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Rising investment:
Live events draw big
Latino crowds
Strong investment:
Many choices in urban
and rural areas for
Spanish radio
Special
Events
Radio
Online
Low investment: Heavy
web usage for Anglophone
market, but low targeting to
the Latino community
Print
Strong investment:
Significant exposure to
print in both languages
TV
Strong investment: Weekly TV
watching in Spanish rivals that
of English
Figure 19: Multichannel Appeal to U.S .Latinos
Based on the low occurrence of translated or culturally sensitive content at the
websites we reviewed, it is clear that many corporate marketers have yet to
discover Latino America. However, these global brands have not written off the
Latino community. Quite the contrary – some spend significantly on advertising
in other channels, although not necessarily at the eight percent of total ad budget
suggested by agencies focused on Hispanic markets (see Table 17). In our
shotgun searches, we found these brands engaged in a variety of indirect
advertising and market development – most offline (see Table 18).
What will this cross-channel approach cost? As with market segmentation, it
should be part of your overall planning. It will take time, some external
investment in research, and money to publicize your efforts.
Step 3: Organization – Utilize In-house and External Resources
Look around your company for groups that already target Latinos – and get
them together. If your job is localizing for global markets, broaden your remit to
include domestic ethnic translation. If you’re in marketing, buddy up with the
teams localizing websites for international markets. Talk to the procurement guy
to find the cultural marketing agencies, system integrators, and language service
providers that are already on the payroll helping you globalize the business.
February 2005
54
Rank
Company
Expenditure in
millions USD
Business Week
Global Brand
Corporate Website
in U.S. Spanish
1
Procter & Gamble
$80.13
No
No
2
Altria
$60.74
(Marlboro)
No
3
General Motors
$55.29
No
No
4
McDonald‟s
$48.15
Yes
No
5
Sears, Roebuck
$42.53
No
No
6
Toyota Motor
$40.00
Yes
Yes
7
Americatel
$39.06
No
Yes
8
Pepsi-Cola
$38.93
Yes
No
9
AOL Time Warner
$36.86
Yes
No
Coca-Cola
$34.88
Yes
No
10
Table 17: Top 10 Advertisers in the U.S. Hispanic Market
Source: Hispanic Business Magazine (December 2003)
Organize across channels, organizations, and geographies. Create an ethnic
SWAT team inside your company, crossing organizational boundaries.
Involve global teams to leverage translation that may already be underway
for Latin American markets – as Yahoo! apparently does (see Figure 20). You
may find much of what you need already translated for South of the border.
Inventory who you already have working for you. Identify who has the
responsibility for ethnic markets. In our research we found a variety of
suspect titles including ‚Multicultural Marketing,‛ ‚Hispanic Segment
Marketing,‛ ‚Latino Segment Marketing,‛ ‚International and U.S. Hispanic
Marketing,‛ and ‚Latin America and U.S. Hispanic Marketing.‛ While you’re
at it, find out who is responsible for Spanish-language websites for Spain,
Mexico, and Argentina so that you can share resources, processes,
technology, and budget.
Bring in mainstream marketers and operational functions. The absence of
domestic Spanish-language sites indicates that the core marketing group has
delegated ethnic marketing to product or niche marketing rather than
adopting it as part of their strategy. Your job is to talk up the opportunities –
and to grab some of their resources. These are the people with money and
tools like site measurement and business analytics. Finally, to meet your goal
of creating a full-service ethnic presence online, you need to involve
representatives of human resources, production, general counsel to review
legal compliance issues, and other departments that might be affected.
February 2005
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Venue
Examples
Advertising
VW and Coke run bilingual ads in Hispanic and general markets. LVMH
uses Puerto Rican rapper Tego Calderón as its Hennessey spokes-celebrity.
Diversity
Education
Health
Live Events
Media
Politics
Sports
Most firms trumpet their commitment to diversity, highlighting awards that
recognize corporate efforts to ensure a good mix of races, ethnicities,
religions, and other social differentiators.
Ford actively funds education scholarships, while McDonald‟s hosted the
Lo McXimo de la Música national concert tour to raise money for Hispanic
scholars. Honda sponsors its own Hispanic Scholarship Fund. Pepsi hosts
Conferencia sobre Medios Latinos, Tecnología de la Información y
Telecomunicaciones (Conference on Latino Media, Information
Technology, and Telecommunications).
Ford sponsors the Champions of the Community program to raise
awareness of car crashes as killers of Latinos. It also supports Salud Sobre
Ruedas to provide vans for healthcare clinics. Kellogg‟s has put its energy
behind the fitness benefits of Zumbando, a Latino-inspired dance craze.
New York‟s Puerto Rico Day Parade, Miami‟s Calle Ocho, Los Angeles‟
Fiesta Broadway, and Cinco de Mayo events around the country present
great opportunities for big brands to sponsor, exhibit, and advertise.
La Casa Pepsi promotes a game show with Univision. AOL‟s Música
channel showcases new Latino artists on Impulsa. Yahoo! en Español
created the LAUNCH music destination for U.S. Hispanics.
While not visible from its U.S. corporate page, AOL‟s Latino 9.0
Optimizado offered “Tu Voz es tu Voto 2004” for election coverage. In
2004, for the first time, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico delivered
the Democratic Response to the State of Union Address in Spanish.
Fox Pan American Sports has introduced Premios Fox Sports to recognize
U.S. Hispanic and Latin American sportsmen. Brewer Budweiser has
brought boxing to Telemundo. Baseball‟s Anaheim Angels team is Latinoowned, and its most recent hires – four Latinos – claim to be thrilled about
being able to talk to the boss in their native language.
Table 18: Marketing to Latinos Offline
Contract with multicultural agencies. Many brands rely on full-service
advertising agencies for promotion, public relations, and placements. Turn to
these agencies to help you market to your target ethnic groups. Visit
Worldwide Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies where you will
find Burston-Marsteller’s Hispanic Group, OMD Latino, and many others.
Get an external translation partner. Do not translate websites using internal
teams. Most companies contract out and for good reason (see ‚How to Avoid
Getting Lost in Translation,‛ Dec03). Those who rely on internal teams tie
themselves to expensive fixed costs and inflexible staffing. Instead, find a
translation agency with expertise in international Spanish.
February 2005
56
Yahoo! apparently leverages
translations for South and
Central America to create
content for U.S. Latinos.
Figure 20: Yahoo! Traveled Pan-American Highway for U.S. Latino Content
Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. and Yahoo!
What will this cost? Much of your work here will be in aligning investment and
staff across organizational boundaries. By leveraging translations across various
Spanish-speaking markets, over time you actually may save money. Make sure
that your external agencies – marketing and translation agencies – take
advantage of these opportunities for making the investment pay off twice rather
than billing you for the same work twice.
Step 4: Content – Invest in the Right Mix of Materials
Planners often ask us whether they have to translate their entire website for
effective ethnic or global marketing. This question spurs a huge debate. The
answer depends on the audience, the product, the competitiveness of the market,
and the availability of substitutes. Language is critical, but cultural awareness
counts for a lot. The following bullets provide several perspectives on the issue.
There is no law that says you must have a Spanish-language website. Many
U.S.-resident Spanish speakers are perfectly bilingual. However, the research
tells us that 70 percent prefer Spanish for domestic and family activities. They
use English at work. However, when they’re home in front of their PCs
wearing their pajamas, many surf for comfort-language content.
February 2005
57
Figure 21: Effective Content Mapping for Ethnic Sites
If not language, how about tuning the experience to cultures? A fully
translated site may be more than your budget can handle, so you might try
tweaking the site to ethnic markets as a first step toward acknowledging this
community. If you run holiday promotions, add major Spanish-market feasts
and celebrations. Tie these in with live events like Calle Ocho in Miami,
working cross-channel promotional opportunities wherever you can. English
or Spanish, you will create mental links between your company and this
desirable demographic. In the final analysis, though, language will tighten
the relationship.
Tell people who you are and how to contact you. We always default to the
EU’s Directive on Distance Selling for sound guidance on what absolutely
has to be translated. Besides basic information about who your company is
and how to contact it, we consider translating frequently asked questions
(FAQs) to redirect inquiries away from expensive humans. If you cannot roll
out everything at once, work your way up through the stack of essential
content (see Figure 21).
Consider first impressions. What a visitor sees at your site on his first visit
will largely determine whether you see him again. With that in mind, we
asked our bilingual site reviewers what they thought about the sites they
appraised. They were very impressed by the depth and breadth of Yahoo!
February 2005
58
and the transactional elements of Hertz. They thought that HSBC’s Spanishlanguage site was weak – both in the limited amount of content and in its
two-dimensional, text-only starkness. HSBC offered only product
information, choosing not to build a banking relationship with its Latino
customers as it does in English. Spanish speakers must find a branch if they
need any more information.
Beg, borrow, and steal resources. Some of the leading sites that cater to
Spanish speakers leverage work done in Central and South America to
bootstrap their Latino U.S. efforts. Do not make the mistake of locking up
content by country and its dialect; instead, pick your own flavor of Spanish
and use that across all markets. The reality is that anyone who prefers
Spanish would prefer seeing some Spanish content – even if it’s not his
national dialect – than seeing none at all. That philosophy might push some
to machine translation, an alternative to no translation. Proceed with caution
on MT, however, for marketing and similar communications (see ‚SDL Puts
Machine Translation in Its Place,‛ Mar04).
Offer equivalent sites. In the interest of time-to-market or lower costs, many
firms succumb to the temptation to offer ethnic users a tiny subset of what
they offer on their mainstream sites, as does Amazon (see Figure 22). Then
there is hispanicbud.com and its unfortunate English apology for its
renovation. As we noted in our global gateways report, some parts of
corporate sites have a long shelf life, while others reach their sell-by date
pretty quickly. Stale or missing content will be obvious to bilingual visitors
who can compare and contrast what you offer in Spanish and English.
Sweat the details. It’s the little things. Of the Latino 12 in global brands,
seven translated the metatag for each page (that’s the descriptive text that
appears above the File-Edit-View line in your browser). That small addition
allows a Spanish-speaking visitor to see where he or she is. For example, on
Yahoo!’s yellow pages directory, the metatag reads ‚Yahoo! P{ginas
amarillas‛ and its help page says ‚centro de ayuda.‛ Heineken and Kellogg’s
list the company name, while Ford taints its excellent showing with English
tags (see Figure 23). To its credit, Amazon translates metatags (see Figure 22).
Answer the phone and e-mail. Eight of the 12 localized-for-Latinos global
sites offer a toll-free number, but only Toyota and Kellogg’s tell you they will
answer the phone in Spanish. Twenty of the 50 e-tailers suggested we call
them; many were able to answer the phone in Spanish.
February 2005
59
Amazon translates metatags.
Amazon retains much of its
English-language site, including
navigation, headers, shopping
cart, and descriptions.
Figure 22: Amazon Offers Spanish Hierarchy with Large Dollops of English
Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. and Amazon
What will it cost to offer the right level of content? Translation will probably
consume a good chunk of time and money, but call centers will be the most
expensive line item. By redirecting calls to FAQs, you can cut some expense.
Auto-responders and canned responses in Spanish will save you more. As with
all of these steps, though, you have to determine the cost of not doing it. In
searching for sitios en Español we found some less globally visible or less valuable
brands actively targeting the online ethnicity gap – evidence that some
companies besides our 16 Latino-aware firms see a big opportunity.
Some U.S. brands offer Spanish sites. Wells Fargo (banking) and Western
Union (financial services) both offer fairly complete experiences in Spanish.
Nextel (telecommunications) and Warner Brothers (entertainment) offer
landing pages sites in Spanish. In future research we will review other U.S.
brands for their efforts to appeal to Latinos online – and to see how deeply
they translate their sites. Newstarts like Sí TV eschew translation, betting that
‚fresh and irreverent‛ English from the ‚unique perspective‛ of its viewers
will win over young Latinos. Meanwhile, Nielsen Media Research halted its
plans to gather TV viewer data in New York, reacting to concern that its
standard approach would severely undercount black and Hispanic viewers.
February 2005
60
Ford’s translators forgot to translate
the metatag that lets visitors know
where they are on the site.
Kate speaks only English.
Figure 23: Ford Grinds Some Gears with English Metatags and Monolingual Kate
Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. and Ford
Some foreigners covet U.S. Latinos. We see non-American companies like
Grupo Prisa, Spain’s largest media conglomerate, eyeing the U.S. market.
Already active in South and Central America, Grupo Prisa’s North American
beachhead today comprises an AM radio station in Miami, Spanish-language
film and television production with Televisa and Univision, and book
publishing. Slow-moving English-only brands could be left outside looking
in as non-U.S. firms rush to meet the needs of Spanish-speaking Americans.
Step 5: Technology – Use Corporate Solutions
We’ve gotten this far without any discussion of technology investments, but all
good things must come to an end. Because ethnic marketing will rely directly on
the outward-facing web, intranets, and cross-fertilization with other channels
and corporate investments, you must work closely with your IT staff to:
Review your technology stack. Assess whether your visible information
systems can manage different character sets and translated messages. That
will require upgrading software for data warehousing, business intelligence,
and relationship management. Don’t forget content contributors who might
February 2005
61
touch Spanish content – they need to set their keyboards to be able to type ñ
and its accented amigos. Most leading products support European character
sets, but you may have problems when you move beyond your Latino efforts
to target U.S.-resident Chinese speakers.
Use content management templates to create a common look and feel.
Brands strive to convey positive, lasting, and cohesive impressions. Content
management system (CMS) suppliers that met our Globalist level of
multilingual support – Documentum, FileNet, IBM, Interwoven, and
Stellent– would be safe foundations for a CMS architecture that could handle
both global and domestic multi-ethnic content as well (see ‚Rage Against the
Content Management Machine,‛ Apr03).
Automate the process. Synchronize Anglophone, ethnic, and international
sites, but don’t rely on your webmaster’s memory to keep them coordinated.
Use CMS to manage content, processes, translation, and rules that determine
which content goes where. The jury is still out on globalization management
systems. GMS cost and complexity remain high, while success stories for
global accounts are still low and even lower for two-language ethnic sites.
Tailor the experience. Use customer relationship management (CRM) tools
to manage the combination of ethnicity, language, and the cultural
motivators unique to each audience. For example, some bicultural visitors
might appreciate cultural nuance but opt for transacting in English rather
than Spanish. Give them choices. CRM plus CMS technologies can manage
linguistic differences and ethnic preferences among American Latinos with
Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban roots.
Test religiously. Even the best of companies shortchange testing of any kind,
typically because it falls at the end of any development or content posting
process. Rather than rely on fluid timelines, you might consider outsourcing
testing of linguistic quality, end-to-end transactions, site analysis, and even
call center effectiveness. The larger LSPs – Bowne Global, Lionbridge’s
VeriTest, and SDL – provide comprehensive testing solutions, and are now
being joined by Moravia’s QASite and other growing service providers.
What will this investment in systems cost? The nice thing about these
technologies is that they are no different than what you would use for any
international sites or for a global content or customer relationship management
architecture. The biggest cost will be in patching up legacy systems that don’t
talk global and, for new purchases, ensuring in the RFP process that incoming
February 2005
62
systems can meet both domestic ethnic and international needs. Testing will be
expensive, but no more so than dissatisfied customers and failed transactions.
Step 6: ROI – Measure Effectiveness Using Mainstream Tools
It all comes down to measuring the return on investment in ethnic websites.
Over the last few years marketing resource management has grown up around
the promise of quantifying the value of enterprise expenditures, with the goal of
putting a dollar value on every web, print, TV, or radio impression.
Unfortunately, solutions from Unica and Veridiem that would help you assess
the value of cross-channel ethnic efforts remain very expensive. Until they come
down in price, talk to your buddies in IT and marketing about using some of
their current tools –data warehousing from Teradata, business analytics from
Cognos, and web analysis from SPSS, to name a few – to measure your results.
Web effectiveness is far easier to gauge than traditional sales for which you
might set up a separate sales force or channel in a distinct territory. In the worst
case – no measurable return – you could always pull the plug on the Latino site.
The biggest line item for translating a website is not the initial effort but the cost
to maintain it, so your only real cost would be the price of the translation.
One great way to start is with an A-B split. Translate parts of your website, ask
visitors for their preferred language, then direct them randomly to English and
Spanish content. Use a web analyzer to record their journey through your
website and analyze the effectiveness of content in each language using metrics
like click-throughs, downloads, and completed transactions if you have them
(see ‚Beggars at the Globalization Banquet,‛ Nov02 for other ROI barometers
like the lifetime value of clients and return on client). This approach will let you
determine whether U.S. Latinos are more likely to buy if addressed in Spanish or
if you tailor information to their needs. Will you be able to create a longer-term
relationship? Brands like Heineken and Hertz are counting on it.
February 2005
63
Ethnic Marketing
Nuts & Bolts
Given the web’s role as the first stop on the way to a customer’s relationship with
your company, you will ignore online inquiries at your own peril. However, our
research showed that responding to prospects and customers appears to be a
problem for most companies, whether the communication is in English or
Spanish – and presumably in any other language you might mention.
The following sections lay out a stepwise approach to being a better online
correspondent. We start with the practical issue of reading and understanding a
low volume of messages. Then we lay out a do-it-yourself project using autoresponder technology that you probably already have in-house. Then, to address
larger volumes of messages more intelligently, we add in a ‚sniffer‛ to identify
the language of the incoming message; natural language processing (NLP)
technology to mine the messages for business value; and customer relationship
management (CRM) software optimized to manage e-mail response.
Getting Started with a Low Volume of Inquiries
Several global brands said that they would be able to serve us better if only we
asked them our questions in English, typically because they cannot read or
respond to the message. If each of your customer service reps answers only a
small number of non-English messages, try free machine translation to get a
quick read of what an e-mail or webform message includes (see Table 19). Make
sure they save their correspondence in a shared repository for tracking and
analysis. Besides free services, you could try an Office plug-in or e-mail service:
Plug-in for desktop applications. Web-connected Office users can translate
text for free by choosing the Tools-Language-Translate option or paying for a
professional translation. Extra-cost plug-ins like SDL’s Desktop Translator or
Systran’s Professional Standard translate text in an e-mail or document.
E-mail workflow. Some language service providers (LSP) can provide bidirectional translation. For example, WorldLingo advertises such a capability,
but you can expect to find similar offerings from any LSP with a web-based
portal such as Bowne Global and Connect Global. Another approach would
be to outsource this work to a contract call center like Prestige International.
February 2005
64
Free machine translation into English from . . .
7
BabelFish
DE

ES

FR

IT

JP

KR

PO

RU

ZH

FreeTranslation









Google









IBM









InterTran









iTranslator









Promt









Systran









WorldLingo









Table 19: Free Translation Resources for Large-Population Languages8
Caution: Use free translation only to read messages. Get a translator to write
your reply so that you don’t look foolish or go totally off brand (see Table 20).
The quality of grammar and expression is obviously not up to that task.
Our Spanish Messages 1 and 4
Machine Translated
Buenos días. Mi nombre es Fernanda
Méndez, les escribo porque me gustaría
saber si ustedes brindan información en
español sobre cualquiera de los productos de
su empresa que se venden en EEUU.
¿Podrían por favor indicarme que productos
hay disponibles? Muchas gracias.
Good morning. My name is Fernando Méndez, I
write them because would please me to know if you
offer information in Spaniard on any of the
products of their business that are sold in US. They
would be able please to indicate me that products
there are available? Many thanks.
Buenos días. Mi nombre es Jennifer Perez,
vivo en Boston y me gustaría saber donde
comprar sus productos. Muchas gracias.
Good morning. My name is Jennifer Perez, alive in
Boston and would please me to know where to buy
its products. Many thanks.
Table 20: Free Machine Translation Approximates What Correspondent Wants
Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. and Freetranslations.com for Machine Translation
From left to right, these languages are German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean,
Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese.
8 Some sites distinguish simplified and traditional Chinese. Systran has licensed its MT engine to
BabelFish, Google, and WorldLingo. Systran and some of its licensees also support Dutch and
Greek in addition to the listed languages. FreeTranslation adds Dutch and Norwegian. InterTran
machine-translates Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish,
Flemish, Greek, Hindi (in transliteration), Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian,
Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Welsh, and
distinguishes between Brazilian and European Portuguese.
7
February 2005
65
The Basics: Auto Responding to an E-Mail Message or Webform
Every e-mail server has the ability to automatically respond to an e-mail. Any
web developer who can create a form should also be able to write code to send
an e-mail to anyone submitting a message. You can start right away on the cheap
by using these tools and paying for some professionally translated responses.
Reply with a canned response. Write a message to anyone who contacts you
letting them know that they will receive a response in 24 or 48 hours,
sometime next week, or never. Then develop a process for following up on
those messages – and do it.
Post e-mail addresses for other languages. Right next to your info@ address,
add [email protected]. Then produce an automatic Spanish
response to messages sent to that address. Use the same tactic to create
accounts for [email protected] and other language
communities, and use auto-responding e-mail servers to make that first reply
to their inquiries.
Code a generic response to your webform. As the responses we collected
demonstrate, companies were no more likely to answer inquiries sent via
webforms than ones sent via e-mail. Answering well-structured webform
messages from potential customers is as simple as writing the code to
generate auto responses to your message input form.
Create Informative Canned Responses
Working with a qualified language service provider, develop a catalog of canned
messages (see resources like GALA for a list of LSPs). These suppliers can also
help you lay out a general strategy for meeting the needs of Spanish-speaking
Americans – or of any other nationality you want to target at your website. The
pre-written responses that these linguistic Cyranos will write for you will
leverage any in-house language resources you have:
For companies with foreign-language customer service. Whether it is
automated or human-generated, your first-level response to a message sent
to your Spanish-language e-mail should be in Spanish. Tell the correspondent
that you received the message and that you will answer it within a specified
period. Work with your favorite LSP to make sure that this first response is
‚on brand‛ and correctly reflects your values. The same tactic will work for
other nationalities, whether you’re targeting other ethnic communities or
international markets.
February 2005
66
For companies without foreign-language skills. Set customer expectations
in your first response by making visitors aware that you will not be able to
help them in Spanish, but tell them so in Spanish – at least for this first
message. Let your correspondent know that your company is unable to
continue the correspondence in Spanish, but you are interested in hearing
what he or she has to say. Ask them gently to write again in English,
avoiding peremptory ‚English please!‛ demands like Exxon-Mobil’s.
If your company has any materials available in Spanish, even if for other
geographies, point them directly to that URL; don’t make them work to find one
of your Spanish-language websites. Tell them that while the product or service
offerings may differ in the United States, it will give them a good idea about your
offerings. This response will tell your correspondent something more about your
company, its products, and its values – even when you cannot do so in Spanish.
Collect the Right Data on Your Webform
A well-designed webform stores everything into a database of name, address,
time of receipt, and other key identifiers (see Figure 24). With this information
you can generate alerts to the appropriate department and automate the
response. However, few of our sample companies took full advantage of the
webforms they posted, but that was their failure in execution rather than a
shortcoming in the tool. As you solicit interactions via webforms:
Ask for minimal data. Typically, webforms solicit a name, e-mail address, a
subject often through a drop-down menu of common topics, the message
itself, and sometimes a country or postal code and a phone number.
Anecdotally, some companies we’ve spoken to about webforms tell us that
the more information you ask for, the less likely people are to complete it.
You need to balance your desire for data with the possible intrusiveness of
your request.
Respect privacy. Notify webform users that the information they provide
will only be used to answer their question. Give them a choice of opting in to
future communications from your company; do not automatically add them
to your mailing list. Avoid the Philips’ presumptive opt-in approach of
sending a survey to harvest valuable market data without bothering to
answer the question that your respondent asked.
February 2005
Tell them how you
will use the data
that you collect –
and only use it for
that purpose.
67
Collect only the
basic data you need
to answer visitor
inquiries
Figure 24: Webform Structures Communications with Online Visitors
Ask for language preference. You could add a drop-down menu to the form
so visitors can list the language in which they feel most comfortable. This
information can help you staff up or find resources to meet those needs.
Deploy Language Sniffers to Identify Language
All of the automated responses we received were in English. You can add some
intelligence to that process by ‚sniffing‛ the message header and body to
determine its language. Once you know the language, you can route it to the
appropriate department, customer service representative, or external language
service provider to write the response.
Language guessers. If you have text in some unknown language (for
example, the label on the prescription bottle held by the recently expired
foreign gentleman sitting next to you on the flight to Tirana), logon to one of
several sites offering a language guesser. Our favorite is at Xerox’s website.
Programmatic language sniffers. Tools like Basis’ Rosette Language
Identifier, Alis’ ¿Qué?, and Inxight’s LinguistX come as a software library
February 2005
68
with programming interfaces available in such languages as C++, C#, C, and
Java. In a typical e-mail server or webform scenario, an application searches
for hints about language and encoding in the e-mail headers and passes that
information, along with the raw bytes from the message, to the language
sniffer. This linguistic identifier then uses statistical algorithms to classify the
language and encoding. You can specify the minimum quality of match that
you will accept as unambiguous, thus letting you route some messages to a
‚don't know‛ category.
Such sniffers are not foolproof: For example, a Lotus Notes message may indicate
the template from which it came and thus provide the language identifier with a
clue as to the language. However, it would not be that unusual for a Paris-based
multinational to use a French file header but have Germans writing e-mail.
Nonetheless, these solutions provide a much more elegant way to deal with
incoming messages than setting up a stack of language-dependent e-mail
addresses for canned responses.
Finally, a corporately hosted machine translation server from IBM, SDL, or
Systrans could play a role here, but only for reading the messages to get a sense
of what they’re saying. However, creating the workflow, and training the MT
engine, will involve more work and money than most companies will be
prepared to invest (see ‚SDL Puts Machine Translation in Its Place,‛ Mar04).
Explore Where Text Mining of Messages Might Improve Your Business
Once you begin systematically capturing e-mail and webform interactions in a
customer service database, you can ‚mine‛ freeform text and structured data to
discover frequently asked questions, trends, gaps in product or service coverage,
and even new opportunities. For example, without violating your commitment
to privacy, you can scan and analyze non-personal details like the subject or
category of the message and limit, if not eliminate, the kind of inconsistency that
we observed among different customer service representatives.
These tools isolate, categorize, and summarize the main ideas of text you feed
them. Some suppliers of natural language processing tools that let you harvest
value from customer interchanges are Inxight, SRA International, SAS, and SER
Solutions. Inxight’s SmartDiscovery, for example, can extract facts from a freeform text and sort that extrapolated data into more formal data structures for
subsequent analysis. Expect to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for such
solutions, but they will prove valuable in other parts of your enterprise like
business intelligence, knowledge management, and research. When considering
February 2005
69
text mining and discovery products, ask the provider to demonstrate how their
offerings will:
Support your file formats. The text miner should be able to deal with the
data you manage. That will mean Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange, and
files from Office, Acrobat, SQL databases, live chat, and so on.
Route messages. The miner should interface with your content management,
workflow, or customer relationship management (CRM) systems so that it
can automatically distribute incoming messages to the right customer service
representative or direct them to defined areas.
Read other languages. Our research into e-mail started with our interest in
how companies responded to our Spanish messages. All these text mining
tools work with English; make sure they also work with the languages that
matter to your company.
Power Up More Powerful (and More Expensive) CRM Systems
If your company is already in thrall to a CRM solution, ask your sales rep about
e-mail response solutions that they would be more than happy to sell you.
Several vendors say that they can manage the whole e-mail receipt, response,
and cycle within the context of their CRM solutions, some claiming support for
non-English messages as well. We will drill down into products like ATG’s
Communication Center, iPhrase’s OneStep Contact Us, RightNow’s Smart
Assistant, and Siebel’s eMail Response in future research. These software
suppliers maintain that they can automate responses to common queries, suggest
responses to less usual ones, filter out spam, identify the language of the
message, answer in the language of the message, ask respondents about the
appropriateness of the answer they receive, and route messages based on the
skill set of individual customer service reps.
The Postman Doesn‟t Ring Twice Online
Except for not being interested in communicating with prospects and customers,
there is no excuse for remaining incommunicado on the best two-way channel
for communication on the planet. If you don’t respond to inquiries coming from
the [email protected] e-mail address or webform you posted at your
February 2005
70
website, you can expect visitors to escalate their concerns to your more expensive
call center or more likely just go elsewhere to find a communicative supplier.
Ethnic marketing opportunities aside, it makes sense to improve e-mail response.
By answering prospects’ and customers’ inquiries, companies can:
Deflect expensive customer service calls. Unanswered questions or
inadequate responses often lead to prospective customers choosing another
retailer or dialing a call center. Clearly written FAQs, self-service tools, and
systematic e-mail response improve call deflection rates. When such utilities
are offered in other languages, an approach adopted by The Sharper Image
and 1-800-Flowers, these customer service tools improve visitor satisfaction
while decreasing overall call volume.
Improve conversion rates. The best way to measure online effectiveness is by
tracking small visitor events like click-throughs to follow-up pages or signing
up for a newsletter. These micro-conversions lead to bigger steps in the
buying cycle like prospects asking for more information or actually buying
something. Which conversion rates should you use? For domestic ethnic sites
adopt the same metrics that you use for your mainstream market. That way
you can take the results into budgetary and planning meetings to compare
apples to apples (see ‚Beggars at the Globalization Banquet,‛ Nov02).
It‟s Time to Add the Latino Demographic to Targeted Marketing Plans
While many companies overlook the Latino market in the United States, a
growing cadre of firms actively courts the online business of this linguistically
challenging demographic. Some do so by translating their websites, others by
answering their e-mails or providing call center support in Spanish. The best
integrate their web efforts with print and broadcast marketing channels.
Whichever approach you choose, make sure that it’s part of your overall
marketing plan. Budget accordingly. Use the experience you acquire in massmarketing to the Latino demographic to refine targeting to better defined, finer
grained segments. Finally, remember to apply the lessons learned in domestic
multicultural marketing to your overall globalization strategy.

February 2005
71
Appendix
Global Brands and Website Availability in Spanish
The following table lists the brand name, a brand value calculated by Business
Week and Omnicom’s Interbrand, whether the brand has a U.S. Spanish site, and
Hispanic Business magazine’s estimate of 2003 advertising spending (NA means
the data is not available for that company). The ‚Good for Latinos‛ column
identifies brands that appear on Hispanic Magazine’s list of the ‚100 companies
providing the most opportunities to U.S. Hispanics.‛ The magazine picks the
companies based on a survey of each company’s recruitment, diversity training,
ethnic representation of board members, and minority business activities. It also
considers funding efforts for scholarships, grants, organizations, and donations
to Latino communities. Orange-banded companies offer Spanish-language sites.
Rank
Brand
Brand Value
(US$ billion)
U.S. Site in
Spanish
Hispanic Ads
(US$ million)
Good for
Latinos

1 Coca-Cola
70.45

34.88
2 Microsoft
65.17

NA

3 IBM
51.77

NA

4 GE
42.34

NA

5 Intel
31.11

NA

6 Nokia
29.44

NA
7 Disney
28.04

48.15

8 McDonald’s
24.70

60.74

9 Marlboro
22.18

16.55

10 Mercedes
21.37

40.00

11 Toyota
20.78
NA

12 Hewlett-Packard
19.86

NA

13 Citibank
18.57

25.64

14 Ford
17.07
NA

15 American Express
16.83
6.00

16 Gillette
15.98




NA
17 Cisco
15.79

18 Honda
15.63

NA
19 BMW
15.11

NA
10.59

February 2005
72

20 Sony
13.15

21 Nescafé
12.34

12.52

22 Budweiser
11.89

38.93

23 Pepsi
11.78

NA
24 Oracle
11.26

NA
25 Samsung
Electronics
10.85

NA
26 Morgan Stanley
10.69

NA
27 Merrill Lynch
10.52

17.25

28 Pfizer
10.46

NA

29 Dell
10.37

NA

9.41

NA

9.12

NA
32 Nintendo
8.19

2.10
33 Nike
8.17

NA
34 Kodak
7.83

NA
35 SAP
7.71

NA
36 GAP
7.69

NA
37 HSBC
7.56

38 Kellogg’s
7.44

39 Canon
7.19

NA
40 Heinz
7.10

NA
41 Goldman Sachs
7.04

NA
42 Volkswagen
6.94

NA
43 IKEA
6.92

NA
44 Harley-Davidson
6.77

NA
45 Louis Vuitton
6.71

NA
46 MTV
6.28

13.45
47 L’Oréal
5.60
48 Xerox
5.58

22.80
49 KFC
5.58

NA
50 Apple
5.55

NA
51 Pizza Hut
5.31

NA
52 Accenture
5.30

NA
53 Gucci
5.10

7.62
30 Merck
31 JP Morgan
February 2005
4.70

11.12


NA



73
54 Kleenex
5.06

55 Wrigley’s
5.06

56 Colgate
4.69
57 Avon
4.63
58 Sun
NA
22.00

6.51


NA

4.46

NA
59 Philips
4.46

NA
60 Nestlé
4.46

NA
61 Chanel
4.32

NA
62 Danone
4.24

NA
63 Kraft
4.17

NA
64 AOL
3.96

NA
65 Yahoo!
3.90


36.86
66 Time
3.78

67 Adidas
3.68

NA
68 Rolex
3.67

NA
69 BP
3.58

NA
70 Tiffany & Co.
3.54

NA
71 Duracell
3.44

NA
72 Bacardi
3.43
73 Hermes
3.42

NA
74 Amazon
3.40

NA
75 Caterpillar
3.36

NA
76 Reuters
3.30

NA
77 Levi’s
3.30

NA
78 Hertz
3.29
79 Panasonic
3.26

NA
80 Ericsson
3.15

NA
81 Motorola
3.10

NA
82 Hennessy
3.00

NA
83 Shell
2.98

NA
84 Boeing
2.86

NA
85 Smirnoff
2.81

32.83
86 Johnson & Johnson
2.71

NA
87 Prada
2.53

NA
88 Moet & Chandon
2.52

NA

NA

NA

NA




February 2005
74
89 Nissan
2.50

NA
90 Heineken
2.43

NA
91 Mobil
2.41

92 Nivea
2.22

NA
93 Starbucks
2.14

NA
94 Burger King
2.12

NA
95 Ralph Lauren/Polo
2.05

NA
96 FedEx
2.03

NA
97 Barbie
1.87

21.62
98 Wall St. Journal
1.76

NA
99 Johnnie Walker
1.72
100 Jack Daniels
1.61

NA

NA

34.88

Table 21: Global Brand Websites in Spanish
Global Brand E-Mail Rsponse
The following table lists the website and the results of our e-mail experiment for
each of the messages we sent to the 100 global brands. We used the following
legend to characterize the responses:
0. The company did not answer the inquiry at all.
1. The company replied in English, but did not answer the question.
2. The company replied in Spanish, but did not answer the question. These
were usually pre-written responses.
3. The company answered the question in English, even if the inquiry had been
written in Spanish. This is good for the English inquiries, but not so good for
the Spanish messages.
4. The company answered the question in Spanish.
February 2005
75
Companies
(all .com)
English
Spanish
Msg 1
Msg 2
Msg 3
Msg 4
Msg 1
Msg 2
Msg 3
Msg 4
Accenture
3
3
0
0
3
3
0
3
Adidas
3
3
3
3
1
0
3
3
Amazon
0
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
American Express
Service unavailable
AOL
0
3
3
3
0
0
Apple
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Avon
3
3
3
3
3
0
4
3
Bacardi
0
3
0
0
2
0
2
0
Barbie
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
BMW
0
3
3
0
1
1
1
1
Boeing
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
BP
0
3
0
3
0
0
0
0
Budweiser
3
3
0
3
0
4
4
0
Burger King
Burger King does not accept e-mail.
Canon
Service unavailable
Caterpillar
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
Chandon
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Chanel
3
3
0
3
3
3
3
0
Cisco
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Citibank
3
3
1
3
0
0
0
0
Coca-Cola
3
1
3
3
1
1
1
1
Colgate
3
3
3
3
0
0
2
2
Danone
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Dell
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Duracell
0
3
3
3
0
0
0
4
Ericsson
3
3
3
3
0
4
3
4
FedEx
3
3
3
3
0
0
0
0
Ford
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
GAP
3
3
3
3
0
0
0
3
GE
1
0
0
1
4
1
0
1
Gillette
3
3
0
0
1
1
1
1
Goldman Sachs
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Gucci
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Harley-Davidson
“To speak with a Harley-Davidson customer service representative call 414-343-4056. Sorry,
February 2005
76
Companies
(all .com)
English
Msg 1
Msg 2
Spanish
Msg 3
Msg 4
Msg 1
Msg 2
Msg 3
Msg 4
we're unable to receive e-mail at this time.”
Heineken
3
3
0
3
2
2
2
2
Heinz
3
3
0
3
2
2
2
2
Hennessy
Contact just for French site
Hermes
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Hertz
3
3
3
3
0
0
1
0
Hewlett-Packard
3
3
3
1
1
4
2
1
Honda
We could not contact the company by e-mail
HSBC
3
0
3
3
4
4
4
4
IBM
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
IKEA
1
1
1
1
4
0
0
4
Intel
3
3
3
1
4
1
4
4
Jack Daniels
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Johnnie Walker
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Johnson & Johnson
3
3
3
3
4
3
3
3
JP Morgan
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Kellogg’ s
1
1
1
1
0
2
2
4
KFC
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
Kleenex
0
0
0
0
4
0
0
0
Kodak
1
3
3
3
4
3
4
4
Kraft
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
Levi’s
3
3
3
3
1
0
3
4
L’Oréal
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
4
Louis Vuitton
3
0
3
3
3
4
4
3
Marlboro
0
1
3
0
1
1
3
0
McDonald’s
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
Mercedes
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
Merck
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Merrill Lynch
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
1
Microsoft
3
3
3
3
3
0
1
1
Mobil
3
3
3
3
1
1
1
0
Morgan Stanley
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Motorola
0
3
3
3
0
3
0
0
MTV
February 2005
Service unavailable
77
Companies
(all .com)
English
Spanish
Msg 1
Msg 2
Msg 3
Msg 4
Msg 1
Msg 2
Msg 3
Msg 4
Nescafe
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Nestle
3
3
3
3
4
2
0
4
Nike
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Nintendo
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
Nissan
0
0
3
1
1
2
0
0
Nivea
3
0
0
3
4
3
0
3
Nokia
0
3
3
3
0
4
0
0
Oracle
0
1
0
0
0
1
0
1
Panasonic
3
3
3
3
4
4
0
4
Pepsi
1
1
1
3
0
0
0
0
Pfizer
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Philips
3
0
0
3
0
1
0
0
Pizza Hut
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Prada
No communication option available on website
Reuters
3
3
3
0
4
4
3
1
RL/Polo
0
3
3
3
3
3
4
3
Rolex
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Samsung
3
3
3
3
0
4
0
0
SAP
3
3
1
3
1
0
0
1
Shell
0
3
0
3
4
3
4
0
Smirnoff
Re-directs to corporate site for Diageo PLC (UK)
Sony
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Starbucks
3
3
0
3
0
0
0
0
Sun Microsystems
3
3
0
0
4
4
3
1
Tiffany & Co.
3
3
0
3
3
3
3
3
Time
0
0
3
0
3
0
0
0
Toyota
Only a toll-free telephone number was available at the time.
Volkswagen
3
3
3
3
0
0
0
0
Wall St Journal
3
3
3
3
0
4
0
3
Wrigley’s
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Xerox
3
3
1
3
2
4
1
1
Yahoo!
0
3
3
3
2
1
2
1
Table 22: Summary of Responses for Global Brands
February 2005
78
U.S. Internet Retailers
The following table lists the website and the results of our e-mail experiment for
each of the messages we sent to the 50 leading web retailers as identified by
Internet Retailer. We used the following legend to characterize the responses:
0. The company did not answer the inquiry at all.
1. The company replied in English, but did not answer the question.
2. The company replied in Spanish, but did not answer the question. These
were usually pre-written responses.
3. The company answered the question in English, even if the inquiry had been
written in Spanish. This is good for the English inquiries, but not so good for
the Spanish messages.
4. The company answered the question in Spanish.
Companies
(all .com)
English
Spanish
Msg 1
Msg 2
Msg 3
Msg 4
Msg 1
Msg 2
Msg 3
Msg 4
1-800-Flowers
0
3
0
1
0
0
0
4
All Posters
3
3
3
3
0
2
0
1
Amazon
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Bed Bath &
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
0
Berries
3
3
3
3
0
0
0
0
Best Buy
3
3
3
3
2
2
4
3
Bluefly
3
3
3
0
4
4
4
4
Beyond
Buy
Telephone only
Coach
3
3
1
0
0
0
1
3
Crate & Barrel
1
3
1
1
0
1
4
4
CVS
3
3
0
0
0
3
0
1
Dell
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Diamond
3
1
3
3
1
4
4
4
Discovery Store
3
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
Drugstore
3
3
3
3
0
0
0
0
eBags
3
3
1
1
4
1
1
1
eBay
3
3
3
3
1
1
0
0
eHobbies
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
Gap
3
3
3
3
1
1
2
1
Garnet Hill
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
February 2005
79
Companies
(all .com)
English
Spanish
Msg 1
Msg 2
Msg 3
Msg 4
Msg 1
Msg 2
Msg 3
Msg 4
Godiva
0
0
3
3
0
0
0
0
Good Guys
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Hallmark
1
3
3
3
1
1
1
1
Hancock Fabrics
3
3
1
0
0
0
0
0
Hersheys
3
3
0
3
0
0
0
4
Hot Topic
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
iTunes
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
JC Penney
4
3
1
3
4
4
1
1
Lamps Plus
3
3
0
3
4
0
0
4
Lands’ End
3
3
1
3
4
1
4
1
L.L. Bean
3
3
3
3
0
1
1
4
Musicians Friend
1
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
Neiman Marcus
3
3
0
3
0
4
4
4
Netflix
Telephone only
NordicTrack
3
3
1
3
2
4
0
2
Overstock
0
3
3
0
4
4
4
4
Personal Creations
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Reflect
3
3
3
3
0
4
4
4
Sears
3
3
3
3
0
4
4
4
Sharper Image
3
3
3
3
4
0
0
4
Simon Delivers
3
3
3
1
0
1
0
0
Timberland
3
3
3
3
3
3
0
3
Toys ‘R Us
3
1
1
1
4
4
4
4
TShirt King
3
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
Victoria’s Secret
3
0
3
3
1
3
1
3
Western
3
3
3
0
0
0
4
4
Williams-Sonoma
3
3
3
3
4
3
3
3
Yankee Candle
3
3
3
3
0
0
0
0
Zales
3
1
3
3
4
0
4
4
Zappos
3
1
3
3
1
3
4
3
Warehouse
Table 23: Summary of Responses for Internet Retailers
February 2005
80
About Common Sense Advisory
Common Sense Advisory, Inc. is an independent research firm committed to
objective research and analysis of the business practices, services, and technology
for translation and localization. With its buy-side research, Common Sense
Advisory endeavors to improve the quality and practice of international
business, and the efficiency of the online and offline operations that support it.
To find out more about our research and how to subscribe:
E-mail us [email protected].
Visit www.commonsenseadvisory.com.
Call +1.978.275.0500.
Future Research
Common Sense Advisory seeks interviewees from the community of people
involved in building business applications for international use. If you would
like to be interviewed or have clients who would like to share their experiences,
please e-mail us at [email protected]. We anonymize participants
and hold all information in the strictest confidence.


February 2005

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