When it began its direct service between DC and Beijing, United solidified its position among a small group of U.S. airlines with landing rights in China. When the airline localized its reservations site into Chinese, it joined an even smaller group of American carriers that provide comprehensive local language support for this booming market:

• Rival airlines offer a mixed bag of Chinese. Among the other U.S. carriers flying to China are American (PRC site is “coming soon”), Continental (PRC site is English), and Northwest (PRC site is in Chinese). Two other big U.S. airlines, Delta and US Airways, fly to China through code-share relationships with partner airlines so they don’t offer Chinese-language interactions.
• United did an okay job of localizing its site. Our Chinese associates tell us that the language quality is very good, but that the site suffers from the usual flaws we find on globalized websites — missing pages, some navigation still in English, pages in mixed English and Chinese, incorrect punctuation, clipped text, English-only support, and the inability to get through an entire transaction in local language and currency.
• Nonetheless, United opens itself up to a huge market. On recent flights to, from, and within China we found that airplanes are overflowing — and not just with western consultants and analysts from Massachusetts and Connecticut, but with many local businessmen, leisure travelers, and students. Will they buy in English? Two-thirds of the 300 Chinese consumers we surveyed last year told us they rarely or never buy from English-language websites. Companies that want to sell to the Chinese, take heed!

What do United and Northwest know that the other carriers are just learning — and what many other retailers, manufacturers, and service providers will have to learn? Don’t ignore China — it’s now the world’s fourth largest economy. Its middle class today totals 130 million consumers and is expected to grow to a quarter of the population by 2010. Within 20 years, 1 of every 3 consumers in the world will speak Chinese from birth.

While we were conducting research in China during March, a few things came up that will accelerate the need for western companies to localize their products and websites for China: 1) The government relaxed import licenses for 338 categories of products to achieve trade balance with the west, thus opening the huge Chinese market to more U.S. products; 2) it opened an imports section at the Canton Fair, the country’s largest trade fair, giving U.S. companies a chance to show their wares to Chinese buyers; 3) the State Council recommended that the country open its services sector to foreign investment; and 4) the Asian Development Outlook 2007 predicted that the Chinese economy will grow 10% this year but “just” 9.8% in 2008. Just 9.8%…

United’s foray into Chinese website localization is obviously about a bigger phenomenon: The company realizes that China is a big market demanding that providers of goods and services market and sell their offerings with local language and transaction support. This is yet another chapter in the Can’t Read, Won’t Buy saga.