John Yunker

John Yunker is founder of Byte Level Research and author of the widely acclaimed book, Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies and editor of Global By Design. He has covered the emerging field of Web globalization for half a decade and has published a wide range of reports dedicated to best practices in Web localization and internationalization. In his book John talked about the localization and globalization of a specific brand from its originary country to a new unknown one. John talked about differents brands that spread their product in new countries such as Mc Donalds. He argued that " McDonald's got started in China in 1990 and plans to have 1,000 locations open by the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Roughly half of all future locations will have drive-thrus. But because this is still a new concept in China, McDonald's is treading carefully. For its first drive-thru, it had a human taking orders rather than that garbled box we Americans have barked into for years. The larger issue is that the Chinese look at restaurants as gathering places and not pass-thru places, at least not yet. Says the article...
McDonald's has spent much of its time in China learning to slow down from its fast-paced U.S. roots. The company's new restaurants have Internet connections, play areas for children and special seating for their mothers, all of which are designed to reinforce their role as gathering places. "We eat McDonald's when the kids want to," says Luo Wenwei, a housewife from the prosperous southern town of Dongguan, who drives a Volkswagen."