Lessons from another culture
France Telecom was seeking to maximize the impact of new bandwidth and wireless technologies in its home market. The program studied mobile phone users in Japan, where adoption of wireless services is sky-high, and compared the findings to France to explore the potential for similar services there. The apparently identical activities of owning, carrying, and operating a mobile phone have radically different meanings in different cultures - and it is meaning that drives adoption. Based on the comparative research, France Telecom now has a range of strategies that don't merely emulate what has worked in Japan; rather, it is developing new services that leverage critical cultural differences between Japan and France. |
