On MySQL's site you can read the docs for your database. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/configure-options.html shows how to config for different encodings. You don't say what datatype you are using, but I use varbinary for any data I think might need unicode support. You really just have to hanker down with the docs. Also, there are other ways to be more specific about the way you bind to your place holders where you tell DBI what datatype to use ( look for :sql_type in the perldoc on DBI, for example you might do something like this for your query:

use DBI qw/:sql_types/;
#... 
$query->bind_param(1, 'A Â Ã Ä', SQL_VARBINARY );
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JamesNC