| Cultural differences of web page design can be presented by comparison between Chinese and American catering industries.Based on the constrastive analysis and content analysis of 10 American and 10 Chinese catering chains,this thesis applies Hofstede's value dimensions,Hall's high-and low-context model and Marcus and Gould's framework of web page design to analyzing cultural differences in the web page design of Chinese and American catering industry.Marcus and Gould hold that cultural dimensions such as power distance,uncertainty avoidance,individualism & collectivism,femininity & masculinity and long-term & short-term have a great influence on web page design.This thesis puts forward 21 hypotheses according to the framework of interface design in Marcus and Gould's study.The sample data reaffirms some elements of the framework and some other elements are not in conformity to culture dimensions.The findings of this research prove that,among Hofstede's five value dimensions,masculinity vs.femininity dimension has the most noticeable effect on web page design of catering chains.Chinese catering home pages use more superlative words,less hard sell approaches,more animations,more hierarchical navigations,more pictures of women and worse visual aesthetics.American catering home pages use less superlative words,more hard sell approaches,less animation,more linear navigations,less pictures of women and better visual aesthetics.Uncertainty avoidance dimension has the least noticeable effect on web page design of catering chains.Eight hypotheses are not supported.Therefore,eight elements can't be explained by culture dimensions and framework of web page design.This thesis finally summarizes several points that web page designers should pay attention to when they design the catering web pages.Apart from improving brand competitiveness,this thesis gives suggestions about cultural factors to designers of Chinese catering brands that want to have access to American markets. |
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