Setting Up an e-Commerce Credit Card System in Emerging Markets

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Enabling broader credit card functionality and multiple payment options on your e-commerce site allows you to sell to emerging markets, which comprise more than half of the world’s population, and to other promising regions of growth in the world as well.  In the article below, I discuss where these emerging markets are, what is involved in setting up a credit card system and what online payment methods are most commonly used to sell to emerging markets.

Full disclosure:  This article is for client Pitney Bowes Global Ecommerce Solutions

Read:  Credit Cards and Ecommerce in Emerging Markets

The Middle Class Is On the Move All Over the World

According to Milton Kotler, the middle class is on the move all over the world.  What does that mean?  We need to open our eyes to the reality of the vast urban middle class in the East, and other parts of the so-called developing world. He illustrates his points (trends) in a comparative view of two great cities, one new and one old: Shenzhen, China and Chicago, Illinois (the latter where I live - pictured).

The second purpose is to open Western eyes to the economic dynamism of BRIC countries and their emerging and developing market cohorts in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The Middle Class in on the move all over the world, and is moving at a faster pace in the Developing and Emerging global sector than in the Developed sector.

Learn more over at Milton Kotler's China blog (fascinating material).

Photo courtesy:  ©2013 Laurel Delaney.  All rights reserved.

To Become a Winner, Find Clever Ways to Outperform Larger Competitors

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In a new book, The New Emerging Market Multinationals:  Four Strategies for Disrupting Markets and Building Brands, the authors say:

Just how do you win against larger competitors who have more resources than you? A new wave of smaller companies from emerging market countries have discovered that you can not only win, but have the advantage over larger companies. It's just a matter of deploying your resources — however limited they are — very strategically.

Read the entire article: What Small Business Can Learn from Emerging Markets

Looking for Disruptive Ideas? Try the Developing World

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Where will the next game changing idea take place?

We Americans may think of poorer nations as hotbeds of war and disease, a place to send our charity checks. But emerging economies are actually an invaluable breeding ground for innovations that could change lives in the U.S.

Think along the lines of what is called "reverse innovation" or a Lab For the World.

Discover more here.

Scoping Out Hot Business Opportunities in Emerging Markets

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You can do good to do well.  In this case, corporate employees help and scope out opportunities in developing countries.

Read:  Doing Good to Do Well (The Wall Street Journal)

Emerging Markets Build Their Own Networks For World Trade

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Emerging markets -- China, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa -- are building networks among themselves not just for expanded trade in goods, but for:

short-term and long-term investment and the transfer of technological and managerial innovation in all directions. 

See how and why this is happening here.

How to Push Your Business to Get Growth From Developing Markets

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In a recent Wall Street Journal Article, "Philips's CEO Urges Local Strategies for Emerging Markets," reporter Paul Glader interviews Philips Electronics NV Chief Executive Gerard Kleisteriee.

Kleisteriee shines a magnificent light on his firm's global strategy. The company aims to boost emerging-market sales from 30% to 50% by 2015 by focusing on China.

An interesting snapshot:

WSJ: What do companies have to do differently now in emerging markets?
Mr. Kleisterlee: It does not suffice to serve only the metropolitan areas. In India and in China you need to have good rural distribution.
Increasingly we, and also our competitors, develop products in these emerging markets for the emerging markets. So it is not a European or a U.S. concept that gets sold in China or India but things that we have designed, engineered and manufactured locally for the local market.

Read the entire interview here.

By the way, I did not know Philips has an online store.

Emerging Markets Make Up a Growing Share of Japanese Exports

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Sound familiar?

Japanese companies from Toyota to Canon are for the first time looking at poor people in emerging markets as potential consumers.

To offset the slump at home, Japan is seeking new, high-growth markets.

See where they are headed here.

Similar story: "Japan's Exporters Eye Every Rupee"

Posted by: The Global Small Business Blog

Panasonic Goes Local to Achieve Global Economies of Scale

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Television, consumer electronic and white good producer Panasonic Corp., which already has a sizable chunk of Japan's home appliance market, is aggressively pushing into India and Europe by considering local production in those areas to take advantage of lower distribution and manufacturing costs not to mention acquiring a competitive edge in delivery time.

Important Insight

Panasonic sees ...

... emerging markets -- defined by the company as Brazil, India, Russia, China, Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey and the Balkan states -- overtaking North America and Europe as the biggest overseas market for its overall consumer products by 2013.

Read more about this here.

Panasonic sporting some heavy duty innovation.

Saturate Your Local Market? What Is Left For Growth?

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L'Oreal, the giant luxury cosmetic company, is holding its own revenue-wise in comparison to its competitors such as Estee Lauder Cos. and Procter and Gamble.  In the first half, sales of L'Oreal's products, including Lancome and Kiehl's, plunged 13%. To me, that's not a big dive.

L'Oreal Chief Executive Jean-Paul Agon, with company headquarters based in the outskirts of Paris, shares his business vision for the future on L'Oreal with journalist Christina Passariello of the WSJ.

Biggest takeaway?

WSJ: L'Oréal already has a wide presence in emerging markets. What is left for growth?

Mr. Agon: We are really pushing our acceleration of business in new markets. Even this year, if Western Europe, North America or Japan are tough, the rest of the world is doing very well. China is growing, Brazil is growing, India is growing. And we are also opening up new markets where we were not before. Since the beginning of the year we have opened three new subsidiaries—in Egypt, Pakistan and Kazakhstan.

The internationalization is really doing well. For example, [first-half sales growth in] Brazil is 21%, India is 16%, South Africa is 19%, China is 14%. In a crisis year, when a big country like India or China or Brazil is growing double-digit like this, it's very encouraging.

Read the entire interview here and learn about L'Oreal's anti-crisis strategy.

Designer Labels Are Losing Their Appeal in Japan

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Considered the world's leader in luxury goods, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, canceled plans to rent a 10-story building in central Tokyo for a new flagship store. It shows how the global economic downturn has hit Japan, one of the most important markets for the luxury-goods industry.

What struck me is this:

Emerging markets make up about 15% of the luxury-goods sector's overall sales and had in some places been reporting double-digit growth. But as the global financial crisis has knocked down Chinese and Russian stock and property markets, wealthy consumers are under pressure to cut spending.
Japan, meanwhile, makes up 12% of the luxury sector's global sales of €175 billion ($240 billion), according to a Bain & Co. study released last month. But the Bain study said Japan's luxury sales are expected to decline 7% in 2008, after a 2% decline in 2007. LVMH reported that in the first nine months of 2008 Japan sales were down 7%, as its world-wide sales grew 4.5% in the period to €11.6 billion.

Who would think that emerging markets would be snatching up expensive luxury goods?

Read the entire article here.

Emerging Market Companies Take On The World

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Emerging markets are not merely generating economic growth. They are also producing companies that are worth investing in, and that are even starting to take on and beat the best of the developed world’s multinationals.

Find out who they are and where they operate here.

And while you are at it, check out the Economist country profiles to figure out a plan on how to work with these champions.

Ignore Globalization At Your Own Risk

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Growth during difficult times can most certainly come from emerging markets. It's a good way to be a part of reshaping globalization.

Read more about that, a new book and more here.

Invest In Emerging Market SMEs

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The Social Equity Venture Fund (S.E.VEN), just launched a competition to develop new indicators and models for investment in emerging market small and medium-sized enterprises.

The competition is open to everyone, and is offering U.S. $50,000 in funds awarded for the best ideas. Entrepreneurs in developing markets often cite a lack of financial capital as the biggest barrier to growing their business. This competition, and its results, are one concrete step in demonstrating the power of entrepreneurship, and business, as a sustainable solution to world poverty.

S.E.VEN hopes that by opening up the discussion to anyone interested in participating that they can come up with more diverse and effective ways of looking at investment in emerging market SMEs.

Full details of the competition are available here.

When Are Emerging Markets No Longer Emerging?

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When you think of emerging, what comes to mind? I think about something evolving on its own. It moves from informal to formal and begins to develop, grow and eventually prosper.

The folks at Knowledge at Wharton have a whole new way of determining what emerging means when it comes to country development.

It's definitely worth a look.