The Impact of Cultural Characteristics on International Web Design in Marketing Communications

Bachelorarbeit von Anna F. Breitenöder

Introduction:

While surfing on the internet in search of products and services, visitors still have to overcome several obstacles by doing their purchases on the web. Consequently, they have many reasons to leave the website, among which a crucial reason is already based on first impressions when entering the site. They lack translation, absent clear indication of local pricing and shipping information, no internationalised forms of registration, and inadequate language support on post-sales assistance. These are reasons to make one’s purchase on a competitor’s website. This should startle international businesses as they know their buying public in the various countries they operate. Nonetheless, „they under-invest in their websites for international markets”.

For this reason, it seems to be an interesting theoretical and practical question to analyse the status quo of website localisation of a sample of global players, based on intercultural knowledge.

The thesis aims to fulfill three objectives: firstly, the paper shall contribute to a better understanding of the cultural needs of customers from different cultures, regarding the internet presences of international companies. For this purpose the paper shall provide information on the importance of optimised website localisation. Secondly, an analysis, conducted on the basis of several cultural studies, shall investigate the actual level of international companies’ website localisation, and deduce approaches to best practice for further website localisation projects. Thirdly, the findings shall inspire further research in virtue of the relevance of website customisation to international (online-) marketing.

Introduced by the purpose, objectives and structure the thesis proceeds, onto the second chapter with definitions and comments on culture, fundamentals of communication and communications on the web, as a basis for further work. The third chapter provides the method of the analysis, which is the design of a requirements specification list for culture-specific websites and the method of its evaluation, and is followed by the fourth chapter, which describes the obtained results. In the fifth chapter, these results are discussed aiming to give an answer to the question of this thesis, deduce best practice solutions for further website localisation and to incite further research. To conclude, the paper provides a short summary.

Table of Contents:

Text Sample:

Chapter 2.4.3, Globalisation, Localisation, and Internationalisation: According to the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA), globalisation, localisation, translation and internationalisation have to be differentiated. Globalisation affects the totality of their activities to be performed by operating internationally and hence, includes the globalisation and further culture-specific customisation to different countries. Localisation refers to the adaptation of a website „to the needs of a given locale” which is the complex of cultural conventions and language of the target country where the website will be accessed. Translation indeed can be seen as the most conspicuous task in the localisation process, and in addition to it, demonstrates a huge impact on successful online-purchases. However, it may not be confounded with the process of globalisation, internationalisation or localisation itself even if it is often used synonymously for those terms. „Internationalisation is the process of designing a product so that it can be easily localized without the need for redesign”. The information architecture of a global website has consequently to be designed in such a way that the localisation process might be optimised concerning handling, promptness, quality, and cost-effectiveness.

Chapter 3, Method of the Analysis: To gain a rudimental insight on the actual conduct of website localisation, the analysis bestowed consideration upon two aspects. Firstly, the native homepages of seven of the world’s largest companies of the banking and financial sector have been analysed exemplarily to gain an approach to benchmarks for future localisation projects. Secondly, a couple of localised websites of those companies have been analysed to receive an impression of the actual level of website globalisation performance. The reason for taking the largest companies of the financial and banking sector was the fact that they are represented frequently between the world’s largest companies, it was also to be expected that those companies would provide benchmarks.

Chapter 3.1, Design of the Requirements Specification List:The websites were analysed regarding their level of implementation of the apposite aspect of cultural dimension. As it is difficult to define the right cultural dimensions which bring about analysing the look and feel and cultural conformity of a website to the corresponding country, that choice had to be made on a reasonable basis. These dimensions finally applied to the analysis, for the one reason they have been mentioned most frequently in three publications on culturally customised web design, and another, in the cultural studies that have been exploited for this work. Thus, six cultural dimensions that have already been outlined above were chosen for the present analysis. The dimensions are individualism and collectivism, high and low context, high and low uncertainty avoidance, monochronic and polychronic time perception, high and low authority conception, and masculinity and femininity.

In the sense of attaining a meaningful outcome, the determination of appropriate countries – or cultures – was made according to displaying extremes in the scores of Hofstede’s Cultural Value Framework and in that of Hall’s country classifications. From those countries, the companies were taken for the analysis. The different companies should be able to show differences between each other, and so, the countries with at least one extreme in one of the cultural dimensions came into question. To match for the analysis, some of the chosen companies additionally had to provide websites, which they had localised to other countries. Considering the conditions of showing an extreme index and that of offering different localised websites, the chosen countries are Venezuela, UK, USA, Belgium, Germany, Brazil, and France.

Subsequently, the largest companies of each country of the financial sector were chosen. Those are Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings PLC, BNP Paribas Group, Deutsche Bank AG, Dexia Group, Danske Bank Group, Banco Bradesco SA ADS, and Banco Mercantil Venezolano N.V.

From those seven companies, six companies localise their websites, and with regard to four of them it is estimated that they localise them highly. The websites of the four highly localising companies were taken to analyse the actual level of website globalisation performance, whereas the native homepages of the other companies merely served as an example for country-specific web design.

The analysis has been conducted with the aid of a list designed for cultural requirements inspired by the Volere Requirements Specification Template. According to the template, cultural requirements are counted among the Non-functional Requirements, which focus on guided navigation, performance, and design. These Requirements are „generally more difficult to express in a measurable way” than functional requirements, therefore they are more difficult to test. To receive measurable results, the qualitative findings had to be transferred into measurable data. Indicators of the constructs „cultural dimensions” were assigned to the two poles of each dimension to define the particular level of localisation on the analysed websites. They should be able to specify how much each dimension concords with the non-functional features of a website. The indicators were expressed in the form of requirements and have been derived from five studies about the impact of cultural characteristics on international web design. They were chosen considering their adequacy to an analysis of such limited scope and as an aim to an approach of the issue. The analysis subsequently was conducted on the basis of the created Requirements Specifications List for Culture-Specific Websites.