There is now a truly global marketplace, and for more and more companies, the problem of international growth is increasingly urgent. New markets may or may not yield success – only by plugging into a broader market can you experience the full potential of your international growth. To do so, however, you must master the finer points of culture and language and learn to adapt what you sell to local preferences. This is where the role of a localization company comes into the picture in helping businesses take advantage of the potential of the international markets.
The best localization practices involve more than translation – they involve graphics, colors, logos, money signs, and symbols of cultural context, making users everywhere feel more at home and recognized. Those companies that have successfully globalized their brands generally do so through strategic internationalization and localization plans carefully tailored to each market.
Netflix: Curating Tailored Content
Netflix’s mastery of the geolocation marketplace stems from its recognition that content should reflect the uniqueness of every place. Its recursive analysis of content preferences, considering everything from cultural influences to entertainment trends, has allowed it to make daily improvements to a user’s platform experience in every market. Netflix’s television shows and movies include localized subtitles and dubbing and the creation of original content in specific countries.
Localization extends to the homepage, recommendations, and pricing, all tailored to a user’s language and designed to conform to local income levels.
By localizing and creating a culturally relevant viewing experience, Netflix has established itself as the dominant player in the streaming space, bringing the best of global content to a billion-strong audience.
Spotify: Embracing Local Music Preferences
This intuitive localization strategy of the world’s biggest music streaming service, Spotify, focuses not on the content of the playlists but on their goal, simply to help listeners find music they like wherever they are. Many Spotify playlists are themed the same way across many markets, but the songs themselves might be completely different, reflecting the musical tastes and cultural influences of each region.
For instance, the Songs for a Road Trip playlist in Portugal differs slightly from the Songs for a Road Trip playlist in Sweden. I like Spotify because while it offers the same music as everywhere else, it takes time to personalize a little.
Starbucks: Adapting to Local Culinary Preferences
Starbucks, the largest coffee chain in the world, doesn’t pretend that coffee-drinking culture or culinary tastes are the same everywhere. The company has tailored separate menus and product offerings for different markets, giving its international patrons a more localized experience.
India, where tea is a cultural institution more than coffee, sells Tata’s own branded tea, Teavana. In Japan, even more famous for its idiosyncratic tastes, Starbucks now offers matcha frappuccinos and cookie crumble (with white pudding).
Moreover, Starbucks has tailored its store formats and atmospheres to local cultural norms. In Europe, where social and relaxation are essential, Starbucks stores emphasize a relaxing environment to drink coffee. In the United States, where speed and convenience are emphasized, Starbucks offers efficient take-out and drive-through services.
Domino’s Pizza: Catering to Local Palates
In part, Domino’s Pizza has become a global success by adapting its products to local markets’ culinary traditions and palates. In India, where traditional Western-style pizzas might not be easily embraced by customers, Domino’s has introduced varieties such as chicken tikka masala, paneer tikka, and paneer do pyaza after traditional dishes.
While Domino’s outlets in Malaysia—where beef or pork is specifically not permitted—don’t include non-halal meat in their product range, in Iceland, the menu offers a novelty item of pizzas topped with Doritos-like chips.
Domino’s brand localization goes far beyond the menu: In Australia, vegan and vegetarian plant-based pizzas were introduced to accommodate the growing number of vegans and vegetarians. Meanwhile, Domino’s offers dessert pies in Ukraine, including poppy seed, cherry with cinnamon, apple, and cottage cheese with vanilla and apricot.
Tinder: Bridging Language Barriers
Tinder, the rather successful online dating app, is now allowing people to communicate across language barriers thanks to machine translation (MT) technology. This technology allows a user to chat with and link up with others speaking a different language—all the while maintaining the same design across the app in every language.
This new feature increases usability by allowing users to overcome language barriers, better communicate, and ultimately create a global connection where people of all linguistic backgrounds are welcome to interact and make friends.
Tripadvisor: Catering to Language Variations
What sets Tripadvisor – one of the world’s leading travel guidance sites – apart is its determination to represent various languages, many of which have different dialects. Thus, you can find Mexican and European Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese.
While it may sound trivial, such attention to the minutia of linguistic variation undoubtedly improves the user experience. But it also signals to the person sitting in Cologne, Manchester, or anywhere else in the world who is looking for travel advice that Tripadvisor can be trusted to give them accurate, localized advice, which is undoubtedly part of the reason why so many people turn to the site for their travel planning needs.
Wikipedia: Empowering User-Generated Translations
It’s also a great example of a thoroughly localized web. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is available in more than 320 languages, and its global mission is to provide information and share knowledge in as many languages as possible. Internet users can access a translation tool and add new entries in a language that’s not yet available or is losing ground.
The tool allows people to take an existing article and translate it into another language, copy-editing the whole world at the same time. This allows potentially invaluable information to spread across languages through the efforts of others. In a never-ending act of user-generated translation, this is how Wikipedia works worldwide, overcoming the language divide to allow knowledge to flow to anyone in any language.
Samsung: Tailored Technological Solutions
Samsung’s localization strategy involves observing how people in different markets use technology. By understanding how people use technology in each region, Samsung has developed a better understanding of what it can do to make everyday life easier for its global consumers.
Samsung in South Korea was making bespoke refrigerators that better regulate the airflow and temperature to keep Kimchi fresh, while further down in the Middle East, where temperatures can go above 40 degrees Celsius, there were air conditioners adapted with locally designed compressors for the climate.
Samsung’s global success can be attributed to taking the time to customize its products for different cultures and meeting the unique needs of diverse buyers. Samsung understands that if a company emphasizes the uniformity of human needs and desires across all societies, it can tailor its products to suit customers’ requirements in every region.
Slack: Fostering Global Communication
For example, Slack is a famous communication app team members use to facilitate internal communications. Slack has recently decided to localize its app to enhance its globalization by making it available in various languages. The rationale behind this decision was that the company would be more likely to attract a more comprehensive number of users from different parts of the globe, as it would help to overcome language barriers and, therefore, allow them to feel more comfortable using the app.
This is Slack’s real contribution to the globalization of communication, its way of bringing people together over distances and promoting coherent work and contact between them: not only its commitment to localization and tailoring its platform to users’ language of choice but also its ability to attract people who would otherwise not think of working together.
Conclusion
In the era of globalization, the path to world domination goes via localization. Whether you are a technology company, a cosmetics company, a chemical company, an energy company, or a media company, the cases illustrated in this article show how global companies in different industries are using localization companies to overcome cultural and linguistic barriers, connect with their target audiences, and fuel their international growth.
The companies’ examples above represent different ways businesses tailor their products, services, and user experiences to local markets’ cultural contexts and tastes.
While going global might feel like climbing a rugged and rocky hill—even for a multinational—a good localization partner will provide the knowledge, resources, and support the company needs to climb to the top faster and with greater efficiency. Linguistic know-how, cultural adaptation, scalability, and post-localization support will enable the company to interact with customers long-term, not only in Europe but also in the Asia-Pacific region, North and South America, and Africa.
In short, the globe is getting smaller, and the need to localize is more critical now than ever. The businesses that invest a proper budget and expertise in localization will reap the rewards of reaching audiences in their heart languages and making a difference in the world.
