I agree with the immeria post. Much of my work deals with optimizing sites for different cultures and I'm often bothered by the US-centric aspect of so many companies' web sites. I also think optimizing sites for different cultures involves a great deal more than simply making sure a site has multi-language versions that recognize different geographic locales. Designing for different cultures (to me) involves understanding the psyches of the different cultures you're designing for. I know this can bump into design scalability issues and (again to me) what it really bumps into is a marketing centrism that needs to be avoided. An excellent example of allowing variability of design was given by Coca Cola's Tim Gaudie at the recent DC Emetrics Summit. Each country had their own unique design which they were allowed to retain when each was brought under the corporate umbrella. Nicely done, that!
With all the talk of micro-targeting going on perhaps it's time to think of (oxymoron alert!) micro-targeting in a larger paradigm. This is a marketing issue, me thinks; I was once told that if you own 90% of the market it's time to redefine your market so that you only own 10%. Doing so gives you have something to work for. Can that thought be used in reverse? Can you redefine your micro-target to be a entire culture? If you only have 10% penetration in a certain country, isn't it time to redefine that 10% to you can figure out what micro-target within that country you own 90% of, then reverse engineer from there? I think the same tools apply, and I'm willing to learn otherwise.
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