West and East: when Internet breaks down geographical barriers but not cultural ones.

Abstract

Nowadays Internet has become an important development trend in the world. All developed countries rely on the internet, aware of the impact it has on social life. The development and spread of the Internet have led not only to a real technological revolution, but also to an important cultural revolution, allowing a rapid exchange of information between users from all over the world. This continuous progress of the Internet has led to the birth of e-commerce, and therefore to the trade of goods and services that takes place via the Internet. But despite the internet has been able to reduce this geographical distance between one country and another, allowing users to exchange information, calls, images or videos in real time, or to purchase goods from another country with a simple click, however, it was not able to reduce the cultural distances that still persist between one country and another one. This is why we often talk about cross-cultural e-commerce. This concept indicates that, when a company decides to launch an international trade, it should not simply limit itself to translate the site of its business into another language, but must also understand how customers from different cultures respond differently to your marketing communication. It is therefore important to use a cross-cultural approach that pays attention to all the aspects of a country and its culture, from the translation of names, to the meaning that they can take in another language, from superstitions to traditions that characterize a country, to meet the needs and expectations of local consumers. This thesis wants to demonstrate just this, the importance of understanding the cultural distance between two countries and the difficulty of a foreign company to achieve success without being able to adapt to local customs and traditions, because, even if Internet is able to reduce the geographical distance, it cannot reduce the cultural one. Some examples that highlight these differences are given by the analysis of two case studies, which concern the relationship between Western platforms, in this case Amazon and Uber, with their respective local platforms, and then Alibaba and Didi. From the analysis of these case studies we can see how the local platforms have been successful in the national territory compared to foreign competitors, and this happened because their deep knowledge of the market and its customers, has led them to adopt strategies that respond to needs and to the expectations of Chinese consumers. Amazon and Uber failed to do this, precisely because their cultural background was different and therefore they were not able to fully understand the culture and needs of this people. This is the reason why, as seen in the thesis, sometimes some companies prefer to collaborate with a local platform that, knowing the market and its consumers well, could help to overcome certain linguistic and cultural obstacles.