Discussion Questions and Participation Questions - Essay Example

Along with English which the universal business language websites must the capacity to translate its material to other popular languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Japanese. Doing so will increase the reach of the corporate website. Two issues that are important in international transactions are foreign exchange transactions and regulatory compliances. When doing business international companies have to interchange money. Due to the fact that different countries utilize other monetary units other than the dollar the business transactions internationally have to take into consideration the foreign exchange market.

A way to protect itself against the risk of a monetary unit going up in the value is to write business contracts in which the parties stipulate the monetary unit that is going to be utilized. Another important issue in international business transactions is the local environmental regulations. Depending on the nation there are different regulations. Performing research on the local laws that apply in international location is the best way to reduce business risk associated with regulatory compliance.

You mentioned the importance of knowing the foreign language and the culture of the people. Misunderstanding about cultural issues can lead to major mistakes. For example in India people considered the cow a sacred animal. Fast food chains such as McDonald’s and Wendy’s would be making a major mistake if they tried to penetrate the India marketplace with their traditional products. In some cultures such as the Chinese culture body language is important. Americans are less formal about body language gestures.

Professional databases such as CultureGrams provide great information about the cultures of the different countries in the world. The proliferation of online shopping has become a factor companies cannot ignore anymore. In 2009 e-commerce generated nearly $132 billion in sales in the United States