Globalization and Webpage Analysis: A Social Semiotic Approach

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Corporations and governments are increasingly becoming global players due the nature of the economic, social and political convergence of international markets. This requires organizations to make decisions on everything from product design, production and delivery challenges. Further, corporations must have coordinated strategic and business level strategies to take advantage of such opportunities. The present paper will discuss one of the implications of this globalization relating to the communication and marketing efforts of a globalized strategy.

Developing corporate websites to address local markets represents a challenge for today’s global businesses. Taking a social semiotic approach to this issue, the present paper compares corporate websites between English and Spanish speaking countries and discusses how local cultural differences impact on the corporate message presented using the Internet as an advertising media, as well as on the website’s layout, language and visuals.

Stream: Economics and Management, Media and Communications

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Hilary Becker is an Assistant Professor in the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He received his PhD from the University of Havana and holds a B.Sc. (Biology), BCom, MBA as well as the Certified General Accountant (CGA) designation. Hilary has consulted with the various businesses and governments. He has taught in internationally in MBA and Executive MBA programs. His research has been in performance measurement systems and its relation to Corporate Strategy. Currently, Hilary is doing consulting and research in Blue Ocean Strategy. His coauthor is Aixa Perez-Aguilar, M.A. (Linguistics) and former professor of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Havana, Cuba.