Recognizing the growing demand generated by Hispanic-owned businesses in the U.S., Office Depot Inc. is expanding its already broad web presence with a Spanish-language web site. "The Hispanic market is exploding and today represents a significant portion of our business customers," says Monica Luechtefeld, executive vice president of e-commerce. "After months of evaluating Hispanic buying patterns, we learned that when it comes to making major purchasing decisions, Hispanic business owners want rich content and information, and oftentimes want to make purchasing decisions in Spanish."
Luechtefeld says Office Depot expects the new site, http://espanol.officedepot.com, will build increased loyalty with the retailer's existing Hispanic customers as well as attract new customers. She notes that the U.S. Small Business Administration estimates that there are 2 million Hispanic-owned businesses in the U.S.
The Spanish-language site will feature more than 14,000 office supplies and products. It will also provide several shopping features such as store locator, saved shopping lists, order tracking and comparison shopping tools. Leutchefeld says that Office Depot decided against the simpler route of installing software that would translate English-language content for Spanish-speaking customers, because a test of this technology often left out the true context of product descriptions and other content. She adds that Office Depot's in-house-developed Spanish-language site is built so that Spanish terms are built into the navigation process as well as product descriptions, making it a more effective shopping tool. The site is also supported by Spanish-speaking customer service reps, she says.
Luechtefeld adds that diversity plays an important role in several aspects of Office Depot's operations, including the selection of vendors from Hispanic, African-American and other minority groups.
In addition, Office Depot is developing marketing alliances with Hispanic online media, including Terra.com, the U.S. Hispanic portal of the Terra Lycos global network. The Terra.com agreement includes multi-faceted marketing and advertising campaigns.
Office Depot operates more than 25 public and contract web sites under the Office Depot and Viking Office Products names in the U.S., Canada and 12 other countries.
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