Culture and Design in Web-Communication

Abstract

Nowadays, e-marketing through websites is one of the most essential factors in presenting new products to the consumers and potential buyers. So an effective website should consider understanding of interconnected business environment and intercultural or cross-cultural differences while it is presenting a product to the globalized marketing atmosphere. The purpose of this study is to identify the cultural similarities and differences between Iran and Sweden in web design. In order to accomplish this goal, the writer used qualitative descriptive comparative inductive method through content analysis as primary and literature review as secondary data collection. As theoretical framework, the study is presented some definitions of Hofstede and Hall’s cultural dimensions. Besides, it defines some features of web design and the interrelation of cultural markers and web design’s features based on previous studies. The research is conducted through comparing websites related to the food industry from Iran and Sweden. The writer selects two beverage companies and two mineral water firms as the most common products in both countries. The results revealed that the websites manifest some similarities in using images and colors as well as lay out presentation. They show many differences in corporate information, communication and language usage in their websites. The author believes in some limitations of the study such as lack of study in LTO dimension in Iran and lack of communication between the writer and either the selected websites’ web designers or customers which might affect the outcomes of the exploration. She trusts having the users and web designers as well as marketers’ perspectives will improve the result of the study. This study can be useful for both small and big companies to increase the public awareness of their existence in the recent world globalized marketing atmosphere. Moreover, suggestions are given for future studies considering marketers, customers and web designer’s point of views to investigate in what extent the result will be different from the presented study.