Implications for Managers

The rhetoric-prototype method presented in this chapter has focused primarily on the activities of marketers or design firms that create materials for international audiences. Managers, however, can greatly contribute to the effectiveness and the uses of this methodology by helping individuals focus and update their research. In many cases, these contributions related to the level of information to which managers have access, and managers can use this knowledge to contribute to the rhetorical -prototype method in certain key ways:

1. Provide suggestions for what Web sites to analyze. The rhetoric aspect of the rhetoric-prototype methodology requires individuals to consider a wide range of variables when reviewing items in order to find sites worthy of prototype analysis. While such a process is less time consuming than reviewing a wide spectrum of materials, it could be further streamlined if researchers were asked to focus their activities on a few key companies or organizations. Managers can contribute to this streamlining process by tapping into their knowledge of greater corporate practices and suggesting sites researchers can review for analysis. That is, managers often have more in-depth knowledge of specific companies ( competitors ) that offer particular services or products in a given overseas market. Likewise, managers might know of organizations with which their company has worked or has subcontracted to in a particular nation. If managers provide researchers with the names of such organizations, then researchers could focus their analysis on the sites of those particular organizations, thus saving valuable research time. Additionally, in conducting such a focused analysis, the researcher would know he or she was examining a site that related to his or her organizations products or practices. Such guidance could help produce international materials that better addressed an organization's particular products or services.

2. Establish a regular review process. Online presentations are rarely stable. Rather, site designs can change quickly in responses to new technologies or new societal or governmental developments. Similarly, cultural expectations are not fixed, and they can change quite rapidly depending on events. For this reason, the design checklists researchers produce need to be regularly updated if their information is to remain applicable and useful. Managers can address this need by setting guidelines for how often and when researchers need to review international sites in order to update the design checklists they had previously created. Moreover, managers are often more aware of organizational developments or international business trends than lower-level employees might be. Managers can use this knowledge to establish checklist review schedules based upon key organizational or business trends that could affect both the products their company sells or overseas demands or interests in those products. The results of such activities would be a continual revision of existing checklists. Such revisions would, in turn , allow international online marketing materials to remain fresh as well as address changing expectations within certain cultural groups.

3. Provide projections for international markets. By keeping track of international market factors, managers can anticipate both what regions will be key markets in the future and what new products might be ideal to market in other nations. Managers can use this foresight to prompt employees to research certain cultures before their organization or their products begin to move into particular markets. Through such strategic forethought, managers can direct researches to develop effective international marketing materials in advance of a product's entry into a particular market. This advanced planning can allow the related organization to move quickly and effectively into key markets when conditions for such a move are right.

4. Create archives for storing and sharing information. The checklists resulting from the rhetoric-prototype methodology can be used to design many kinds of online displays such as instructional or help materials or information on the related company. Thus, other divisions within a company can benefit from using the design checklists created as a part of marketing research. For this reason, managers should collect these checklists into databases and make this information available to other departments. Such access would save other divisions valuable research time, would contribute to overall product and organizational success in overseas markets, and would allow for a degree of standardization in online materials designed for particular cultural audiences. Moreover, employees in different divisions could be encouraged to use the rhetoric-prototype method to develop international design checklists that relate to their own activities. These employees could then catalog their checklist(s) in a central database, and marketers could later use this information when creating materials for a particular cultural audience. Thus, by creating and regularly updating such a database-as well as encouraging others to use and to contribute to this database-managers can improve both the efficiency and the effectiveness of how their organization uses online media to share information with other cultural groups.

5. Set agendas for what kinds of online materials will be shared with international audiences. Often, online marketing materials are but one piece in an overall puzzle of goods and services organizations sell to consumers. Revenue resulting from the online marketing of an actual product, for example, might be augmented by the sales of other goods or services associated with using that product. Managers, in turn, can strategize the kinds of associated goods and services their organization might wish to sell in association with certain products, and then have researchers use the rhetorical-prototype method to develop design checklists to use with a wide range of associated materials that can be marketed along with a particular product. By pre-planning such integration, researchers can develop systems for generating more coherent online materials related to a range of goods and services. Such integration would contribute both to product success and online brand identity in international markets.

These activities are but a few ways in which managers can contribute to or use the rhetorical-prototype methodology in order to benefit their organizations. By integrating this method with wider corporate practices, managers can find new and innovative ways to establish a corporate or a brand presence in different overseas markets.