Beyo Global 2024 Round-up

What a year it’s been! 2024 has been a journey filled with highs and lows, moments of incredible joy and achievement but also periods of deep challenge and introspection - both personally and professionally.

Personal achievements
One personal milestone I’m particularly proud of is getting back to my exercise and yoga routine. I can clearly see its positive impact on both my physical and mental health. My goal for 2025 is to maintain this routine, even during international travels - whether for work, leisure or visiting family in Malaysia. If you have any tips on staying fit while travelling, I’d love to hear them!

Speaking of travel, 2024 took me to some amazing destinations - Malaysia, South Africa (Cape Town and Johannesburg), Nigeria (Lagos), Germany (Berlin), The Netherlands (Breda), Portugal (Lisbon) and Spain (Mojacar, Barcelona). Each journey deepened my appreciation of diverse cultures and contexts, fueling my passion for cross-cultural work.

BOOK LAUNCH: RESEARCH FOR GLOBAL GROWTH!

The biggest professional milestone this year was launching my book, Research for Global Growth: Strategies and Guidance for Cross-Cultural Insights. Writing this book required immense effort, but the joy of seeing it published was more than worthwhile.

I tend to downplay my achievements and rarely pause to celebrate them. With the book launch, it took a lovely message from a client friend saying “Congratulations on your book launch Chui Chui!!! So proud and happy for you ❤️ Hope you’re celebrating it 🥳” to make me realise I should take a moment to celebrate this milestone, and I did.

I enjoyed the writing process and I already have another book concept in mind - again focusing on culture but from a more philosophical lens. This experience has been invaluable, especially when compared to my previous pocket book, which involved working with a publisher. This time, I chose to self-publish. Learning the ins and outs of self-publishing has been an invaluable experience for my next book. I'm especially grateful to several friends, particularly Cenneydd Bowles, who patiently guided me through the process and contributed to the book cover design.

The feedback has been heartwarming. Reading reviews on various Amazon websites and Goodreads has been a source of joy and motivation. Even more fulfilling, it has opened doors to connect with remarkable individuals who have shared how the book's insights have made a meaningful impact on their work - sparking positive changes and creating ripple effects in their communities.

While I’m proud of the book’s reception, I realize there’s more to be done to promote it. Expanding its reach will be a key focus for 2025 as I believe the book offers valuable insights not only for those conducting cross-cultural research but also for anyone involved in expanding business across multiple markets.

Here’s what readers are saying:

“This book establishes Chui Chui’s credibility demonstrating a wealth of experience across geography and product. Also a practical approach to mandating field research across cultures including sound tips and hacks. Recommended to global product managers seeking to get closer to their customers!”

“Somehow Chui Chui Tan has managed to condense so much applicable, practical, expert knowledge and advice into this book without overwhelming the reader. You can easily dip in and out of the book, and every visit I make to it is packed with useful, insightful, applicable value. The book has a nice vibe, is informative and themes and concepts are talked through in a logical, clear way.”

“This is a great book to share across a team in order to get buy-in around why it's so useful to consider cultural differences, and how research can be carried out to support data collection about it. I think this is a great reference - one of those books that isn't gathering dust on my shelf, as it often journeys back to my desk as I refer to it!”

Exploring new formats: My YouTube channel

Towards the end of 2024, I ventured into a new medium - sharing my thoughts and experiences on culturalisation, navigating cultural complexities for global growth and challenges companies often face when expanding globally - through video content. While I regularly post on LinkedIn in written form, I’ve long contemplated creating videos but often deferred the idea. Inspired and encouraged by the amazing Andy Polaine, I finally took the leap and I’m glad I did!

Unlike writing, verbal communication feels more natural to me, similar to podcast conversations. When recording, I imagine sharing my thoughts with an audience, which helps maintain a conversational tone.

Each video requires significant preparation: Developing content and key messages, recording (initially requiring multiple takes but improving to one-take videos), editing both video and captions, creating supporting images to go with the videos, crafting compelling titles, designing thumbnails, writing YouTube descriptions with timestamps and preparing LinkedIn posts to support the videos.

Despite the substantial effort involved, I'm enjoying this new medium and plan to continue creating valuable video content. I’m pleased and proud of the content I’ve put together so far! You can check out my channel here.

Venture studio

At the end of 2023, I kicked off a new engagement with Admiral Pioneer, a venture entity within the Admiral Group, to help develop a new business proposition from scratch. Through focused work sprints, we identified a promising proposition with a healthy market size and revenue potential. The subsequent work evolved to include team expansion - searching for a CEO to lead this new venture, fostering team enthusiasm, developing an MVP and identifying the optional distribution channels.

The untapped audiences and potential

As with any other year, I started 2024 by travelling to Malaysia to celebrate the Lunar New Year with my family. Shortly after, I flew to South Africa with Spotify’s Global Premium Proposition and Regional Growth teams. Despite South Africa showing strong conversion rates, internal data revealed that new monthly active users were less inclined to pay for music services. We sought to investigate further, understanding the context of music service usage, what drives or prevents people from paying for music access and any unmet needs in the music experience. This goal was to shape Spotify Premium’s growth and proposition strategy in South Africa.

A practical note: It turned out that getting to South Africa from Malaysia isn’t as straightforward. With no direct flights available, each door-to-door journey took over 28 hours. However, the in-person experience added significant value to our understanding and interpretation of the South African market compared to virtual research alone.

Companies increasingly recognize the importance of connecting with younger generations, particularly teenagers. This demographic represents a diverse, dynamic and tech-savvy audience with growing spending power and influence on family purchasing decisions. It’s an untapped user segment for many companies, including Spotify. Working closely with Spotify Germany's Marketing, Growth and Market Strategy & Operations Teams, we examined not only music consumption but also digital habits, physical experiences and social concerns.

To gain a holistic understanding of this user group, we employed a mixed-method approach to cross-reference data and insights we gathered - combining internal data analysis, quantitative surveys, individual and paired conversations with teenagers and home visits to observe their room setups and decorations, things they proud of and care about, social habits and so on. The insights into teenage thinking and mentality were eye-opening, ranging from surprising to refreshing and admirable.

In the year’s final quarter, I travelled to Lagos, Nigeria, with Spotify Global Premium Proposition and Regional Growth teams. Nigeria, with its multicultural population of 234 million and over 500 ethnic groups, represents a vibrant but complex market. Despite healthy growth since Spotify's 2021 launch, we aimed to uncover untapped audiences and opportunities - having a deeper understanding of their contexts - from financial and technological circumstances to social interactions to attitudes towards music consumption and payment.

During my Lagos visit, I immersed myself in local culture as much as possible, from sampling diverse local cuisines that I could find and exploring West Africa’s largest market to attending music events and visiting the art galleries (including meeting Nigerian most cherished artist, Nike Davies-Okundaye who is one of Nigeria's most well-known batik and Adire artists). One unforgettable highlight was visiting Computer Village, a sprawling tech market where an estimated 20 million phones are sold monthly! These local immersive experiences and observations complemented what we gathered from our formal research, helping build a complete picture of Nigerian culture, local context and consumer behaviour - essential for developing target market strategies.

Lagos, Nigeria (local cuisine, local markets, public transports and Nike Davies-Okundaye)

Innovation to be different

Our work with Dreame Technology, a Chinese smart vacuum manufacturer, revealed fascinating cultural insights about rug usage in Turkish homes. Rugs hold deep cultural significance in Turkey, with households using various types (low-pile, high-pile, fringed, animal skin, synthetic, wool, cotton and machine-woven). We explored the cultural context of rug use in this country, cleaning processes and routines, Robot cleaner adoption patterns and cultural behaviours influencing purchase decisions.

A key discovery was that robot cleaners are deeply embedded in Turkish culture, often featured in marriage preparation and new home setups. This cultural norm presents significant opportunities for Dreame, provided their products align with local needs and contexts. That was exactly the ultimate aim of our collaboration: To provide Dreame with in-depth insights into the Turkish culture and market needs, and collaborate on a product development roadmap across multiple countries, including Turkey.

I’m sure you would agree that one of the reasons that contributes to Spotify’s success is its ever-underlying pursuit of creativity and constant evolution. I was fortunate to work with various teams over the years on different features or propositions at different stages of development. This year, I worked with one of the Spotify teams to explore innovation opportunities in lyrics and karaoke features.

Our research focused on markets with strong karaoke cultures, such as Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Brazil. We found many digital platforms in these markets with sophisticated features that mimic physical karaoke experiences - e.g. advanced scoring system and performance evaluation, virtual karaoke lounges, live sessions, duet-with-artists capabilities and so on. While documenting these features was important, understanding their fit within local user contexts and mentalities proved crucial - especially to establish best design practices.

We also studied the UK market, which, despite having a less developed karaoke culture, often serves as Spotify's initial launch market for new features. It, therefore, makes sense for us to understand the context of lyrics and karaoke use among British users, recognise their needs and expectations. The output of this initiative across multiple countries will guide feature prioritisation and product development to enhance Spotify’s lyrics and karaoke offerings, ensuring greater alignment with user needs. It has been a fun and rewarding topic to explore.

These projects demonstrate the importance of understanding local cultural contexts when developing global business strategies. Each market presents unique challenges and opportunities that require careful consideration and adaptation.

Designing for a specific market

When Squarespace first approached us, it was a simple request: To help them test their Japanese interface with potential users to evaluate translation clarity and platform navigation during common website-building tasks. As our discussion deepened, it became apparent that ensuring their product ‘works’ in Japan, required more than accurate translation.

We needed to explore cultural preferences in website design. For instance, in Japan, it is customary to have a dedicated "Contact” page" for inquiry forms, rather than embedding forms within a page. Squarespace’s feature of adding a form block to the homepage did not align with Japanese users’ mental models, potentially causing confusion. Collaborating with the Squarespace team has been a joyful experience, and I look forward to continuing to support their global expansion.

AI use on cultural intelligence

Earlier this year, my friend Nick who’s based in Sydney reached out to collaborate on an article about AI’s cultural awareness. I had to admit that I was pretty ignorant and sceptical about AI and LLMs then, but I was intrigued. As I’m always up for exploring new things, I said yes. At that point, we did not yet have a clear idea of how we should approach it or what angle we should take.

After rounds of conversations with my friend Mario (who knows AI very well) and further research, I was convinced that it was an important topic to dig deeper into. Nick and I had numerous discussions, leading to a clear vision: There is no doubt that sooner or later, businesses will be using or considering using AI or LLMs specifically to assist them in their global expansion strategies. It’s widely known that these tools have cultural limitations and biases, but our question was, “to what extent?” If companies (or individuals within companies) decide to use them, for example, to determine how they should adapt their businesses for different markets with diverse cultural contexts, how reliable, accurate, and complete is the information that AI can provide?

To answer these fundamental questions, we needed to assess the capabilities (strengths) and limitations (weaknesses) of LLMs in providing cultural-related insights and recommendations.

It wasn’t an easy task. We first examined the causes of biases and limitations in LLMs. Then, we spent significant time and effort experimenting with various prompts, using a case where a business attempts to leverage LLMs to create playbooks for launching products into specific markets. As we also wanted to assess whether using local LLMs would yield ‘better’ outputs, we had to find ways to access some local LLMs (e.g., Baidu’s Ernie, which requires a local Chinese phone number for registration). Then, we identified how to measure and assess the factors in comparing the outputs of these LLMs.

The writing part turned out to be the easiest, though we had extensive discussions about the format in which to present our experiments and findings. We wanted to make the article as practical as possible, so we also explored what our findings mean for businesses and how global leaders can effectively use LLMs while mitigating cultural risks.

My article “AI can’t understand cultural nuance” on Fast Company

In the end, I’m incredibly pleased and proud that the article was published in Fast Company, allowing it to reach a wider audience.

I believe this is a critical topic that businesses (and the people running them) need to be aware of and cautious about when considering the use of AI for global expansion strategies. There’s much more to unpack, so I hope to explore this further in the new year, especially as AI is here to stay. For businesses, the pressing question isn’t just whether to use it but how to use it effectively.

Sharing knowledge with wider audiences

I'm an avid podcast listener - it’s a great way to learn new perspectives and challenge my existing views. When listening, I love paying attention to how engaging guests or experts convey their ideas and interact with hosts.

This year, I was honoured to be on a few notable UX and product podcasts, including:

Mind The Product (with Randy Silver and Lily Smith),
Product (Un)censored Show (with Colin Pal)
Understanding Users (A UX Podcast) (with Mike Green)
Product Voices (with JJ Rorie)

What I love about podcast interviews is the questions from the hosts and the discussions that arise from them. I don’t normally know the exact questions beforehand, which leads to authentic discussions. We go wherever our conversations take us, and I love that! I often feel it was a great session when I was asked questions I hadn’t encountered before or when the hosts approached certain topics from a different angle. It challenges me on many levels in ways I hadn’t considered. These conversations have given me further insights into the challenges businesses face with cultural considerations, inspiring new content for my LinkedIn or YouTube channels.

It sometimes gives me a new perspective on how my materials, advice, and recommendations are implemented, whether I need to explain something more clearly or address an angle I may have missed.

The podcast appearances have also led to valuable connections, not just with the hosts but with listeners who reach out afterwards to share their experiences and insights.

In April, I travelled to Breda for UXInsight to share my cross-cultural research experience with fellow researchers. It was a superbly organised event and the first I have attended focusing specifically on research, leading to many inspiring conversations. I also had the opportunity to share insights about managing international research operations with the ResearchOps community.

Community involvement

When Karel Vredenburg, who wrote the foreword for my book Research for Global Growth, announced his co-founding of Habits for a Better World nonprofit with Carly Williams and was seeking volunteers, I instantly said yes. The initiative aims to address global challenges like climate change, animal and human suffering, food insecurity, human illness, and biodiversity loss. As one of 300 volunteers, I worked with a team investigating digital professionals' awareness of AI's environmental impact - specifically, understanding how much they know about the energy consumption of AI operations like generating responses or creating images. Our findings revealed a significant awareness gap: most professionals had little to no understanding of AI's environmental costs. The complete initiative findings are available on their website.

Conversations with CPOs

Early summer marked the launch of my ‘Conversations with CPOs’ series, where I held virtual meetings with Chief Product Officers from various scale-up companies (e.g. BBC Maestro). We discussed the challenges they (or their businesses) face in serving global audiences, challenged their approaches to global expansions, addressed specific market questions, and guided them on strategies for building global roadmaps.

I particularly enjoy these one-to-one sessions. They feel personal, a setup that suits my ambivert nature perfectly. They provide deep insights into each business’s unique challenges while revealing common patterns across different organisations. It’s especially rewarding to have follow-up conversations and hear about the progress made after our initial discussions.

Why CPOs specifically? It evolved naturally after product leaders reached out following my Mind the Product podcast interview. Of course, I’d be open to similar conversations with any leaders involved in market expansions and global growth—if that’s you, please get in touch!

Recognition

I haven’t yet developed the habit of gathering testimonials from people I’ve worked with (some of whom I’ve worked with multiple times), but I know I should! Sometimes, unprompted feedback feels even more meaningful:

“Thanks for your work on this project - really liked working with you. Looking forward to working with you on another project as well! You’re the Best!”

“You’ve helped us in more ways than we were expecting. We asked for X, you gave us X, Y and Z. Thank you!”

Thank you!

As 2024 comes to a close, I want to express my deep appreciation to everyone who has crossed paths with me in one way or another. Whether through direct collaboration, casual conversations, or online interactions, you’ve all contributed to making this year remarkable. Your support, insights, and willingness to share experiences have enriched both my professional work and personal growth.

Here's to new opportunities and challenges in 2025!