Perceptions of Web site design characteristics: a Malaysian/Australian comparison Available to Purchase

Compares the perceptions of Malaysians (representing eastern, Asian culture) and Australians (representing western, European culture) for four Web site design characteristics – atmospherics, news stories, signs and products and services – as part of the integrated Internet marketing model. Under controlled laboratory conditions, two groupings of 30 subjects evaluated eight Web sites – four in Malaysia and four in Australia – in the retail and services sectors. Hypothesises that the predominant culture is not generalised to another culture. Some tentative support for the research premise is found since where a group’s perceptions for Web design characteristics and their effectiveness was significantly higher, it was for sites originating in that group’s country. Furthermore, perceptions both support and contradict previous research suggesting that Australians prefer an environment of low context and high explicit communications while Asians operate in an environment of high context that stresses implicit communications.