In 2015 the Asian-Pacific market spent $1,056 billion online making it the largest ecommerce market, followed by the North Americans at $644 billion. It was found that 60% of consumers in developed countries have turned to the internet to purchase goods and services. Online transactions come from all over the globe making it a necessity for companies to provide sites that can cater to all of their potential buyers no matter the language they speak. A study that was conducted in 10 different countries found that 54.2% of participants would only purchase goods and services online if the site was presented in their native tongue. The same study also found that customers ranked having product information in their native language as being more important than the price of the actual product. (Common Sense Advisory)
It would take companies only 12 languages to create the capability of reaching 80% of the online audience, by broadening the number of languages available to consumers online, producers can tap into a larger portion of their potential markets making content accessible throughout the globe, an industry study even found that for every $1 invested in localization, $25 dollars was returned (LISA 2007). This can be seen in large corporations who are able to reach markets all over the world by incorporating a multitude of different languages into their online sites. For example Amazon sells in 11 global markets, servicing customers in over 180 countries by providing services in over 9 different languages.
Since online commerce has become such a large and influential market, reaching $22.049 trillion in 2016, the importance for online companies to be able to provide a personalized experience to clients has increased significantly. The North American market is projected to see double digit growth until 2020 from both increased spending and expansion into new markets. By increasing the number of languages that content is available in, companies can most likely expect an increase in global sales as they branch out into other areas of the world.
Sources
1). https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Worldwide-Retail-Ecommerce-Sales-Will
2). https://www.ecommercewiki.org/wikis/www.ecommercewiki.org/images/5/56/Global_B2C_Ecommerce_Report_2016.pdf
3). https://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/portals/_default/knowledgebase/articleimages/060926_r_global_consumer_preview.pdf
4). https://services.amazon.com/global-selling/selling-internationally-overview.html
5). https://ventureburn.com/2016/03/what-are-the-benefits-of-ecommerce-for-your-business/
