Online Marketing Blog: Think Globally Act Locally: Coca-Cola Used Chinese Language Effectively

Going global is the core objective of every growing company. Being a global brand is not an easy task because there are many requirements that must fulfill for operating successfully in the country other than home land. Very first requirement of being global company is to understand the culture of host country. Every country has its own culture and organizations must follow it. Target market in that particular area is associated with their culture.

Language is Main Part of Culture

Language is a part of culture that influence the organization forcefully. You must explain yourself in the host language who you are? Most of organizations ignore this basic part of research that lead to failure in near future. Even translation (in host language) of name of company is important because some time it doesn’t reflect your brand image. This is what happened with Coca-Cola in china at the beginning.

The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", and meaning of it is "Bite the wax tadpole" (bite of grassy frog) or "female horse stuffed with wax" before the proper translation. Coca-Cola’s management then researched 40,000 characters to find actually meaning of Coke and then they found "ko-kou-ko-le", after translation in English meaning of it is "happiness in the mouth" very similar to “open happiness”.

Due to first name Coca-Cola suffered with huge loss and sales were decreasing continuously. Country manager of Coca-Cola said that we can’t realize where u have mistaken because test marketing was full of confidence and product got successful response. By learning from the customers we did know that we are selling crape to them and thing they don’t like.

So point is doing operations in other culture required many things and most important is how to use their language. Coca-Cola use language effectively to express itself what they want to position.

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