ARE CULTURAL VALUES TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION IN THE DESIGN

PROCESS OF INTERNATIONAL WEBSITES? THE CASE OF HONDA CARS

Femke Vyncke1 and Malaika Brengman, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Abstract

Using the case study of Honda Cars, this paper confronts corporate strategy towards cross-
cultural website design with actual design practices. Additionally, it investigates the reflection of
culture in websites, while holding industry sector and corporate culture constant. Results show
that although culture is not deliberately taken into account in Honda Cars’ website strategy, its
websites are culturally congruent.

Introduction

An important stream of literature in marketing science has empirically investigated whether

websites aimed at different target countries are dissimilar. Several studies concluded that these
websites are very different (Barber and Badre, 1998; Cyr and Trevor-Smith, 2004; Okazaki and
Rivas, 2002; Robbins and Stylianou, 2003; Singh and Matsuo, 2004; Sinkovics, Yamin, and
Hossinger, 2007) although also a few studies delivered contradicting results (De Troyer et al.,
2006; Callahan, 2005). The methodology used in these studies is content analysis, a research
method through which communication content is transformed into data that can be summarized
and compared, using objective and systematic categorization rules (Gerbner et al., 1969). The
cross-country dissimilarities in websites, revealed by such content analytic studies, run deep and
involve culturally rooted customs such as color associations, tone of text, vocabulary, and type of
pictures. Culture, in this context, can be defined as a set of values, also called ‘the collective
programming of the mind’, that distinguishes members of one category (e.g., a nation) from
members of another (Hofstede, 1980, 1994, 2001). The fact that websites reflect a target
country’s culture is also called “cultural congruency” (Singh et al., 2006a, 2006b), “cultural
congruity” (Steenkamp and Geyskens, 2006), “cultural similarity” (Dou, Yoo, and Liangyu,
2003), or “cultural familiarity” (Dou et al., 2003).

A second stream of research has investigated whether cultural congruency improves the
effectiveness of websites. This research has confirmed that cultural congruency improves
effectiveness variables such as preference for design, ease of use, attitude towards the site,
satisfaction, trust, e-loyalty and purchase intentions (Singh et al., 2004; Baack and Singh, 2007;
Fink and Laupase, 2000; Cyr et al., 2005).

However, while a general consensus exists that websites are culturally congruent, only a few
studies investigated whether this is the result of a deliberate, organizational strategy (De Troyer
et al., 2006). Do online organizations presume that web users from different countries have
different interface requirements and are they consequently deliberately taking into account
culture in the website design process? Or do researchers observe cultural congruency in websites
because most websites in international organizations are designed by employees from local

1 Femke Vyncke received a predoctoral research fellowship of the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (Belgium)
(FWO Vlaanderen).
offices, who (consciously or unconsciously) translate their own culture into the sites?

In addition, all of the former content analytic studies in this domain approach the research
question from a similar perspective: comparing several groups of websites (two to four), each
targeted at a different country with as main purpose to check for significant differences in the
reflection of certain cultural values (such as masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, etc., see
Hofstede, 1980, 1994, 2001). Often, however, these studies do not take into account the specific
sectors represented in the samples of websites that are being compared (Okazaki and Rivas,
2002; Robbins and Stylianou, 2003; Singh and Baack, 2004; Singh and Matsuo, 2004; Sinkovics,
Yamin, and Hossinger, 2007). This can potentially distort the results as different website features
are more prominent in different sectors (Barber and Badre, 1998; Liao, To, and Shih, 2006). For
example, we might expect information about product safety (an item linked to uncertainty
avoidant cultures, see further down) to be more prominent in websites from the automobile
sector than in websites from the fashion industry. Moreover, so far no study has ever investigated
the cultural congruency of websites from the perspective of a single international organization.
From a scientific point of view this is nevertheless a relevant approach. Holding the company
constant in the research design not only ensures that potential distortions from the industry sector
are filtered out but also potential distortions related to the company culture. Companies carry out
a certain corporate culture which is reflected in their marketing stimuli, such as websites (Picken,
1987). This corporate culture entails a certain tone of text, certain values, certain symbols, etc.
Naturally this influences the design of the corporate website.

The current study aims to fill this research gap. This paper first provides a deeper look into the
organizational strategy of Honda Cars - a true worldwide company – with regard to international,
cross-cultural website design. To this end an interview was carried out with a senior marketing
official within Honda. The aim is to discover the degree to which culture is taken into account in
the website design process. Subsequently, the current study investigates, by means of content
analysis, the actual reflection of culture in the international websites of Honda Cars. This
research design allows us to confront the corporate strategy for cross-cultural website design
with the actual realization. Additionally, it allows us to investigate the reflection of cultural
values in websites, while holding two potential sources of distortion constant: industry sector and
corporate culture.

Honda Cars

Honda Motors is an international company of Japanese origin. The company manufactures and
sells primarily cars, motorcycles, and power products (e.g., lawn mowers). Each product
category is incorporated in a separate company division. Honda recently also made a move into
more advanced technologies such as the HondaJet (an airplane) and Asimo (a humanoid robot).
With these latest advances Honda aims to give expression to its global slogan “The power of
dreams”.

Central beliefs in the Honda corporate culture are “respect for the individual” and “the three
joys of buying, selling, and creating”. The corporate value of “respect for the individual”
expresses that Honda recognizes the unique character and ability of each and every person. “The
three joys” reflects the desire of Honda that every individual that comes in contact with the
company has a joyful experience, whether it is as a factory coworker (creating), a salesperson
(selling) or a customer (buying).

Honda is truly a global, worldwide, international company. This is proven by its presence in 6
continents and in 133 countries. In the research at hand we focus only on the countries in which
the car division is active, as to hold the industry sector constant so this can not lead to any
distortions in the data.

To learn about Honda Cars’ strategy for international website design and to investigate to what
extent culture is taken into account in the design process, we interviewed a senior marketing
manager of Honda Motors. Honda Cars is a division of Honda Motors. The interviewee
supervises all marketing communications of Honda Motors within Europe. The interview was
carried out face-to-face and was of an open, non structured nature.

The interview revealed that within Honda Cars, as far as website design is concerned, no central
strategy exists (neither globally nor per continent). All websites are created by the local
distributors and in some cases by regional offices. Some central guidelines exist but they are very
limited and concern elementary items such as the color and placement of the Honda cars logo.
Furthermore, no actions are taken when national and regional offices deviate from these
guidelines. Asking the interviewee about his knowledge on the cultural sensitivity of marketing
stimuli and the possible impact on the effectiveness of marketing stimuli, it appeared that this
person was not consciously aware of this phenomenon and that this was not really an issue taken
into account by the company. In the future Honda Motors wants to come to a more structured
and centralized approach as far as website design for the car division is concerned. The ambition
would be not to build new national websites from scratch but to align the different existing
national websites more.

In summary, we may conclude that central managers at Honda Cars do not deliberately take into
account culture in the website design process. Websites are, however, not created centrally but
locally, leaving room for website designers belonging to the local culture to translate their own
culture into the website. Consequently, it is interesting to test which of these contradicting forces
within the company dominates. In other words, are the actual, local Honda Cars websites
culturally congruent or not?

Research

Research Question and Hypotheses

“Are cultural differences reflected in the different national websites of one international
company?”

The current study investigates whether the cultural differences between countries are being
reflected in the respective local, national websites of one international company (in the research
at hand: Honda Cars) or not. As there are two opposing, relevant forces within the company – (1)
central management at Honda Cars does not deliberately take culture into account in the cross-
cultural website design process and 2) websites are created at the national/regional level and not
centrally) – it is interesting to investigate which of these forces dominates. To conduct
structured, cross-cultural research, cultural classifications (composed of cohesive cultural
dimensions) are used as a reference (Steenkamp, 2001). These classifications serve as a
nomological structure that enables the development of hypotheses regarding systematic
variations between cultures in attitudes, behavior, reflections of culture in both online and offline
marketing stimuli etc. (Smith, Dugan, and Trompenaars, 1996). Several academics have
successfully developed such cultural classifications and classified countries accordingly,
providing ratings for several countries on the composing dimensions. Two of the most important
and prominent amongst these cultural classifications are provided by Hall (1976) and Hofstede
(1980, 1994, 2001).

Hofstede (1980, 1994, 2001) captures cultural values (the values that distinguish members of
one country from members of another country) in four dimensions. He provides ratings on these
dimensions for 79 countries (see more recent updates on http://www.geert-hofstede.com/).
• “Power distance” (PDI): Appreciation of social inequality and hierarchy. Lowest rating
in the 79 country sample is 11 for Austria, highest is 104 for Slovakia.
• “Individualism” (IDV) vs. “collectivism” (CLT): The degree to which ties between
members of a community are rather loose (i.e., individualistic) or tight (i.e.,
collectivistic). Hofstede provides ratings for the degree of individualism. Lowest rating in
the 79 country sample is 6 for Guatemala, highest is 91 for United States.
• “Masculinity” (MAS): The extent to which masculine values such as assertiveness,
competition, urge for achievement, and success prevail in comparison to more feminine
values such as life quality, nurturing, helpfulness, and solidarity. Lowest rating in the 79
country sample is 5 for Sweden, highest is 110 for Slovakia.
• “Uncertainty avoidance” (UAI): The degree to which individuals tend to avoid
ambiguous situations and risks when making decisions. Lowest rating in the 79 country
sample is 8 for Singapore, highest is 112 for Greece.

Hall (1976) focuses specifically on cultural differences in expression and communication. He

captures these cultural differences in one dimension:
• “High-context” (HC) vs. “low-context cultures” (LC): Persons from high-context
cultures use an implicit, indirect style of communication. In this case, most of the
information is already in the physical context or internalized in the person, while very
little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message. A low-context culture is
just the opposite. In these cultures, communication is explicit or direct. The mass of the
information is vested in the explicit code. Ratings on this dimension are not available.
Countries are classified as either low- or high-context cultures (see also Singh and
Matsuo, 2004).

Based on these cultural classifications of Hofstede (1980, 1994, 2001) and Hall (1976), the
following hypotheses for the reflection of these cultural dimensions in websites are formulated:
H1: For countries scoring high on the “power distance” dimension, the respective Honda
Cars’ websites will reflect a higher level of “power distance” in their design in
comparison to the websites directed at countries scoring low on this dimension.
H2: For countries scoring high on the “individualism” dimension, the respective Honda
Cars’ websites will reflect a higher level of “individualism” (H2A) and a lower level of
 “collectivism” (H2B) in their design in comparison to the websites directed at countries
scoring low on this dimension.
H3: For countries scoring high on the “masculinity” dimension, the respective Honda Cars’
websites will reflect a higher level of “masculinity” in their design in comparison to the
websites directed at countries scoring low on this dimension.
H4: For countries scoring high on the “uncertainty avoidance” dimension, the respective
Honda Cars’ websites will reflect a higher level of “uncertainty avoidance” in their
design in comparison to the websites directed at countries scoring low on this dimension.
H5: For countries classified as “high-context cultures”, the respective Honda Cars’ websites
will reflect a higher level of “high-context communication” (H5A) and a lower level of
“low-context communication” (H5B) in their design in comparison to the websites
directed at countries classified as “low-context cultures”.

Methodology

To verify these hypotheses, an elaborate content analysis of the international websites from the
Honda Cars division was performed.

Coding Framework. The coding schemes provided by Singh and Baack (2004), Singh,
Kumar, and Baack (2005), Singh and Matsuo (2004), and Singh, Zhao, and Hu (2003, 2005)
make it possible to register in a quantitative way the degree to which Hofstede’s and Hall’s
cultural dimensions are being displayed in the websites. In these coding schemes each cultural
dimension is measured by means of different operational cultural value categories or category
items. The degree of depiction of each category item is evaluated on a 5 point Likert scale (“1” =
not depicted to “5” = prominently depicted).

In the current study one integrated encompassing coding scheme was used based on all the
above mentioned studies. This framework, a summary of these studies, is provided below.
• Reflected “power distance”: Presence of company hierarchy information, pictures of
CEOs, quality information or assurance and awards, vision statement, pride of ownership
appeal, proper titles.
• Reflected “individualism” vs. “collectivism”: A) Reflected “individualism”, presence
of good privacy statement, independence theme, product uniqueness, personalization; B)
reflected “collectivism”, presence of community relations, clubs or chat rooms,
newsletter, family theme, country specific news, symbols and pictures of national
identity, loyalty programs, links to local websites.
• Reflected “masculinity”: Presence of quizzes and games, realism theme, product
effectiveness, clear gender roles.
• Reflected “uncertainty avoidance”: Presence of customer service, secure payment,
guided navigation, tradition theme, local stores, local terminology, free trials or
downloads, customer testimonials, toll-free numbers.
• Reflected “high-context” vs. “low-context culture”: A) Reflected “high-context
culture”, presence of soft sell approach, politeness and indirectness, aesthetics; B)
reflected “low-context culture”, presence of hard sell approach, ranks or prestige of the
company, use of superlatives, terms and conditions of use, explicit comparisons.
In case the websites were in a foreign language not mastered by the coder, the website was
translated using Google Translate which enables translation of entire websites. This was deemed
sufficient to be able to judge the extent of depiction of the items used in the coding scheme.
Some of the coded websites had different language versions. These multiple language sites were
few however when coming across such a site, it was checked whether these websites were
identical apart from the language applied. This was always the case.

Website Sample. As mentioned before, Honda is active in 133 countries. In the research
at hand, however, we are only focusing on the 125 countries in which the car division is active.
Even more specifically, we focus on the 86 countries for which Honda Cars has a website. This
was verified using the overarching Honda Worldwide website (http://world.honda.com/). In
some countries the official distributor sells several car brands and has created a common website
for all these brands. Such websites were excluded from the current study as to hold the company
constant, leaving 75 websites to analyse. Additionally, we could only analyze the countries for
which Hofstede provides ratings. As a result, 55 websites were retained for systematic analysis.
To categorize the countries of the retained websites along Hofstede’s dimensions, the average of
the two most extreme ratings of Hofstede on the respective dimensions were used as cut-off
points. To classify the websites, for example, along the “power distance” dimension, we
calculated the average of the lowest and highest rating on “power distance” in Hofstede’s sample
of 79 countries: 11 for Austria and 104 for Slovakia. Consequently, countries with a rating of 58
or lower on “power distance” were classified as “low power distance countries” and countries
with a rating above 58 were classified as “high power distance countries”. To categorize the
retained websites along Hall’s dimension, countries were evaluated as belonging to either “low-
context” or “high-context cultures” based on Claes and Gerritsen (2007) and Hall (1976).

Results

Cronbach’s alpha was calculated for the reflection of each cultural dimension to check for the
internal consistency of the scales. For each dimension the category items with a correlation to the
respective cultural dimension (“corrected item-total correlation”) lower than .30 were deleted. As
a result, 6 items were dropped: “pride of ownership appeal” (power distance), “newsletter” and
“links to local websites” (collectivism), “secure payment”, “customer testimonials”, and “toll-
free numbers” (uncertainty avoidance). The resulting Cronbach’s alphas (after scale purification)
range between .66 and .90. After the scale purification, summated scores were assigned to each
website indicating the extent to which this website reflects Hofstede’s and Hall’s cultural
dimensions. Independent samples t-tests were used to verify per dimension whether websites
targeted at countries scoring high on this cultural dimension reflect this dimension to a
significantly higher degree than websites targeted at countries scoring low on this cultural
dimension (see Table 1).
 TABLE 1
Results independent samples t-tests for summated scores cultural dimensions
Countries scoring Countries scoring
high on the dimension low on the dimension t-test

Mean Mean p

- Reflected power distance 2.96 2.32 .00***

Individualism vs. collectivism

- Reflected individualism 3.11 1.56 .00***

- Reflected collectivism 2.17 3.02 .00***

- Reflected masculinity 3.31 2.34 .00***

- Reflected uncertainty avoidance 3.63 2.80 .00***

High- vs. low-context culture

- Reflected high-context culture 3.07 1.70 .00***

- Reflected low-context culture 2.32 3.31 .00***

NOTE.- *** p≤.01

Power Distance. Table 1 provides support for hypothesis 1. The summated score over all
websites on the items capturing the reflection of “power distance” amounts to 2.96 for countries
scoring high on the “power distance” dimension in comparison with 2.32 for countries scoring
low on this dimension (t-test: p≤.01).

Individualism vs. Collectivism. Table 1 provides support for hypotheses 2A and 2B. The
summated score over all websites on the items capturing the reflection of “individualism”
amounts to 3.11 for countries scoring high on the “individualism” dimension in comparison with
1.56 for countries scoring low on this dimension (t-test: p≤.01), supporting hypothesis 2A. With
regard to “collectivism”, we note that the summated score over all websites on the items
capturing the reflection of “collectivism” amounts to 2.17 for countries scoring high on the
“individualism” dimension in comparison with 3.02 for countries scoring low on this dimension
(t-test: p≤.01), supporting hypothesis 2B.

Masculinity. Table 1 provides support for hypothesis 3. The summated score over all
websites on the items capturing the reflection of “masculinity” amounts to 3.31 for countries
scoring high on the “masculinity” dimension in comparison with 2.34 for countries scoring low
on this dimension (t-test: p≤.01).

Uncertainty Avoidance. Table 1 provides support for hypothesis 4. The summated score
over all websites on the items capturing the reflection of “uncertainty avoidance” amounts to
3.63 for countries scoring high on the “uncertainty avoidance” dimension in comparison with
2.80 for countries scoring low on this dimension (t-test: p≤.01).

High-Context vs. Low-Context Culture. Table 1 provides support for hypotheses 5A

and 5B. The summated score over all websites on the items capturing the reflection of “high-
context” amounts to 3.07 for countries classified as “high-context cultures” in comparison with
1.70 for countries classified as “low-context cultures” (t-test: p≤.01), supporting hypothesis 5A.
The summated score over all websites on the 5 items capturing the reflection of “low-context”
amounts to 2.32 for countries classified as “high-context cultures” in comparison with 3.31 for
countries classified as “low-context cultures” (t-test: p≤.01), supporting hypothesis 5B.

Conclusion

According to the international marketing science literature, there are major cultural differences
between countries that should be taken into consideration with respect to marketing
communications (de Mooij, 2004). Several content analytic studies have confirmed that websites
are culturally congruent with the country they target. However, while these previous content
analytic studies compared diverse country samples of websites, the current study demonstrates
that the hypothesis of cultural congruency can be reconfirmed for a sample of 55 country
websites within one international company, namely Honda Cars. More specifically, website
reflections of the four cultural dimensions of Hofstede (1980, 1994, 2001) –“power distance”,
“individualism vs. collectivism”, “masculinity” and “uncertainty avoidance”- and of the Hall
(1976) dimension – “high-context vs. low-context culture” – all significantly differ in the
hypothesized direction between countries scoring low on the respective dimensions and countries
scoring high on the respective dimensions.

Nevertheless, an interview with a senior marketing official of Honda Cars indicates that the
cultural congruency of the Honda Cars international websites, as revealed by the current content
analytic study, is not the result of a deliberate strategy by the company’s central management.
Within Honda Cars central marketing managers are not concerned with the possible influence of
culture on the communication effectiveness of marketing stimuli. They are not really aware of
the fact that culturally congruent websites may be more effective. The company even plans to
further align the different national websites in the future. Consequently, it is more probable that
the websites reflect the culture of the country they target because they are created at the local and
regional level. Website designers belong to the local culture and consciously or unconsciously
translate their own culture into the local websites.

A research opportunity would be to investigate the cultural reflections in international websites

of international companies where the approach to website design is different to that of Honda
Cars. What if website design is centralized? What if culture is consciously taken into account
into the cross-cultural website design process? Future studies should attempt to tackle these
issues, distinguishing between four possible types of companies (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1
Different Approaches to International Website Design
Culture is deliberately taken into account
 Yes No
Website design Yes Local culturally sensitive Local culturally insensitive (Honda Cars)
is decentralized
No Central culturally sensitive Central culturally insensitive

It could be, for example, that even when culture is consciously taken into account, cultural
congruency proves not to be that significant when websites are created at the central level. This
would reconfirm the possible importance of the involvement of local website designers. In this
respect, an interview with local website designers in different cultures would also be relevant.
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