Cultural Differences in Digital Marketing

Whether a business is B2C or B2B, cultural differences play a significant role in peoples' response to the web design.


Managing Global web design assets 
Managing global web design assets  is not an easy task. No matter how hard a company try and nail down corporate brand guidelines, someone will suggest a few locally produced off-message landing pages.

At one level, global templates offer efficient solution. A company can uphold control over the core design, plus a consistent approach country by country. However a company need to think about template design may not culturally appropriate for each market. Some elements pf the template may be offensive whereas other may find it acceptable, or in some cases favourable.

One solution for nervous Brand Managers is to have a partially localised template as this may offer some security.

This is the homepage of HP in four different countries. In Germany has football match in the laptop's screen as Germans are fans of football and in few days Muntial is going to start. However in United Kingdom  has an exotic picture seems like holidays. In addition in China's has different lights and buildings and in Russia's has a printer. As we can see the same company has different homepages for each country in order to attract its customers.

Example of two retailers one based in UK and the other in France selling the same electrical kitchen product. 

John Lewis based in UK has a clean, impersonal design focusing on beautiful product photography. On the other Pixmania the French retailer puts more emphasis on the use of the product including a family photo with the strapline 'what's your passion?'

The French retail tends to feature much more prominent prIcing in compare with the British Retailer who is more coy about the cost. 

Reference

Smart Insights (2013) 'Web design for cultural differences' 6th August 2013 [Online] < http://www.smartinsights.com/online-brand-strategy/international-marketing/web-design-for-cultural-differences/> [accessed 3 June 2014]