A Cross-cultural Study On Website Design Of China-targeted And US-targeted Websites By International Automobile Companies

The rapid development and popularization of the Internet has promoted the growth of e-business and led to international corporations participating in a global online marketplace.With vast,global customers of different languages and cultural backgrounds,the key for global online success is to design a website that attracts and retains target customers,and establishes trust and loyalty with them.The achievement of this aim requires good understanding of the target customers' cultural values, thinking patterns and customs,rather than simply translating website from one language version into another.Hofstede's four value dimensions and Edward T.Hall's High- and Low-context theory are the most applied intercultural communication theories in website design research.Previous research has investigated university, library and hotel websites.However,little research has examined how cultural factors influence the website design of the automobile industry,such an important industry to a nation's economy.To address this gap in literature and to provide global e-marketers and website designers with insights into how to develop websites for culturally distinct consumers, Nitish Singh's framework for cross-cultural analysis on websites based on Hofstede's four dimensions and Hall's High-context and Low-context culture is applied in this study to evaluate the similarity and difference in website design of international automobile companies targeted at Chinese and American consumers respectively.30 international automobile companies are randomly selected from the "JD Power" list, resulting in a total of 60 websites targeted at Chinese and the U.S.customers respectively,surveyed by adopting the method of content analysis and statistical analysis of Chi-square.The results reveal that similarities are found on Chinese and American websites in cultural categories such as community relations,newsletters,quality assurance and awards,guided navigation,local stores and customer service.While as a whole,clear differences of the dominant cultural values are manifested between the two versions of websites.The dominant cultural values manifested on Chinese websites are collectivism(such as "family theme"),high power distance(such as "company hierarchy information"),and high-context culture(such as "soft-sell approach").The dominant cultural values manifested on American websites are masculinity(such as "product effectiveness") and low-context culture(such as "hard-sell approach").The findings of this study support the statement that the web is not a culturally neutral medium,but is culturally sensitive that gives country-adaptive websites a look and feel unique to the targeted culture.The results of the research provide some significative support for global marketers and website designers.Some Chinese cultural values such as "family theme" and "symbols and pictures of national identity" would be emphasized when developing websites for Chinese customers.When developing websites for the American customers,cultural values such as "product effectiveness" and "hard-sell approach" would be considered.The results of this research also reflect the importance of marketing localization when designing global websites.