Cultural customization of websites for Japanese subsidiaries of global companies

1. Cultural customisation
of
websites for Japanese subsidiaries of global
companies
s1190038 Takeyuki Matsumoto

2. What is the Cultural Customization?
Cultural customization is a fundamental step for reaching
a global audience with your website, and should be
completed as part of website translation and website
localization. While many website owners treat this step as
optional, it should be treated as integral. Website cultural
customization can do a lot to validate your presence on
the web with your target locale and ensure the
effectiveness of your website to locale specific users.
Cultural adaption involves perception, symbolism and
behavior.

3. What is a Cultually Customized Website?
UNIQLO WEBSHOP
ENGLISH

4. What is a Cultually Customized Website?
UNIQLO WEBSHOP
JAPANESE

5. What is the Culturally Customizing?
Culturally customizing a website may sound
like a lot of work, and if you are starting with
a standard website that had no preparation,
considerable effort may be required.
However, if you plan for cultural
customization at the time a website is initially
designed, your work will be considerably
reduced.

6. Cultural customize is a kind of means of communication
☆ Communication reflects complete
“immersion” in the culture of the target market
☆ Communication addresses three levels of
cultural adaption: perception, symbolism, and
behavior
☆ Communication goes beyond simple
translation and cosmetic adaption when
targeting different countries and/or cultures
Cultural customization begins where basic
“localization“ ends.

7. Types of websites
The websites can be defined the stage of the
following three types.
☆ Standard website
☆ Localized websites
☆ Culturally customized websites

8. Standard websites
This type of website has
only one language (usually
English) and the same
content is intended to
reach all countries. No
effort was made in terms of
website translation,
website localization or
website
internationalization.

9. Localized websites
This type of website ranges
from websites with some
translated landing pages,
websites that are fully
translated (localized), to
websites that not only offer
users with translated
content, but also with
content specific to their
country or locale.

10. Culturally customized websites
This type of website not
only takes into account the
language and locale of the
target audience, but also
one or more levels of
cultural adaptation:
perception, symbolism and
behavior.

11. Retail Product Design and Marketing
Excite Japan: Devoted
exclusively to women

12. Perception of Images
☆ Western and Eastern
people look at the world in
different ways.
☆ Researchers compared
the way Japanese, USA, and
Russia students viewed
photographs.

13. Contents to Consider of Customizing
・Graphics
・Elements with text
・Human body elements and body language
・Humor, puns, and slang
・Physical environments
・Ethnic, racial, political,
and religious environments
・Gender-specific elements
・Images of animals
・Sexual and violent elements
・Regional conventions, such as reading
direction, date/time, and monetary elements

14. Five Dimensions of Cultural Customization
In the mid 1970's, the Dutch academic, Geert Hofstede, based
his five dimensions of culture on an extensive survey at IBM in
which he investigated the influence of national culture. His
methodology was both unique in size as well in structure. He
defined organisational culture is an idea system that is largely
shared between organisational members. Hofstede was able to
statistically distinguish cultural differences between countries.
Hofstede classified a county's cultural attitudes as five
dimensions:

15. Five Dimensions of Cultural Customization
☆ Power Distance
☆Individualism & Collectivism
☆Masculinity & Femininity
☆Uncertainty Avoidance
☆High-Low context

16. Power Distance
The extent to which power is distributed
equally within a society and the degree that
society accepts this distribution. A high power
distance culture prefers hierarchical
bureaucracies, strong leaders and a high
regard for authority. A low power distance
culture tends to favour personal responsibility
and autonomy.

17. Power Distance
Japan is a society that is rooted in
tradition, hierarchy, and both social
customs and role structure. In this
society being aware of social
hierarchal structures and
acknowledging them is important.
Example: see how proudly the
CyberAgent website displays the
CEO’s message and depicts them
with high honor and respect.

18. Individualism & Collectivism
The degree to which individuals base their actions on selfinterest versus the interests of the group. In an individual
culture, free will is highly valued. In a collective culture,
personal needs are less important than the group's needs.
This dimension influences the role government is
expected to play in markets. In collectivist cultures like
Japan, the needs, values and goals of the family and
societal unit take precedence over individual goals.

19. Collectivism
Japan is a collectivist society that
places emphasis on group-relations,
family and the extended social
network. Social network sites and
group dating are popular. See the
image used at the BEAMS website for
Japan showing a grandfather, father
and son shaving their beard together.

20. Masculinity & Femininity
A measure of a society's goal orientation: a masculine
culture emphasises status derived from wages and
position; a feminine culture emphasises human relations
and quality of life. Masculine is a belief in achievement
and ambition, on the other hand feminine is a belief in
nurturing and caring for others. Japan is an extremely
masculine culture.

21. Masculinity & Femininity
In Japanese culture it is important to
succeed, challenge and at the same
time conform to the group norms and
not “stand out”. Games and quizzes
are a way of relaxing, challenging
oneself and at the same time not
being in direct competition with
others. One example is that Nissin
has a web game section for children
on their site to play while waiting for
three minutes since put the hot
water into the cup noodle.

22. Uncertainty Avoidance
The degree to which individuals require set boundaries
and clear structures: a high uncertainty culture allows
individuals to cope better with risk and innovation; a low
uncertainty culture emphasises a higher level of
standardisation and greater job security. People from
cultures high on uncertainty avoidance like Japan tend to
have low tolerance for uncertainty.

23. Uncertainty Avoidance
As Japan is a very risk-averse
society. In general it is important
to reduce risk, anxiety and
uncertainty that Japanese
consumers might have shopping
online. For example, using
graphics and pictures of support
personnel along with some
graphic designs for products may
help to reduce the anxiety.

24. High-Low Context
Anthropologist Edward T. Hall’s theory of
high- and low-context culture helps us better
understand the powerful effect culture has on
communication. A key factor in his theory is
context. This relates to the framework,
background, and surrounding circumstances in
which communication or an event takes place.

25. High-context cultures
High-context cultures (including much of the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and
South America) are relational, collectivist, intuitive, and contemplative.
People in these cultures are less governed by reason than by intuition or
feelings. Words are not so important as context, which might include the
speaker’s tone of voice, facial expression, gestures, posture—and even the
person’s family history and status. Japanese are a homogeneous people and
don’t have to speak as much as American do here. When Japanese say one
word, they understand ten, but here American have to say ten to understand
one. High-context communication tends to be more indirect and more formal.
Flowery language, humility, and elaborate apologies are typical.

26. Low-context cultures
Low-context cultures (including North America and much of Western Europe)
are logical, linear, individualistic, and action-oriented. People from lowcontext cultures value logic, facts, and directness. Solving a problem means
lining up the facts and evaluating one after another. Decisions are based on
fact rather than intuition. Discussions end with actions. And communicators
are expected to be straightforward, concise, and efficient in telling what
action is expected. To be absolutely clear, they strive to use precise words
and intend them to be taken literally. Explicit contracts conclude
negotiations. This is very different from communicators in high-context
cultures who depend less on language precision and legal documents. Highcontext business people may even distrust contracts and be offended by the
lack of trust they suggest.

27. High-Low Context
Japanese culture is very high
context and very accepting of
graphics, colors and images to
add depth and context to the
communication. At the same
time, this reduces uncertainty.
Kawaii is the Japanese term for
“cute” and it highly valued in
Japan. There are a lot of cute
characters in the web site of
Sanrio.

28. After website translation and website
localization, if you are going to do cultural
customization for your website, you and
your translation services agency should
take the following issues into
consideration:

29. Using Unicode
The very first step in cultural customization is to make sure that a website
will be able to display any language. The Unicode Standard is the universal
character encoding standard for written characters and text. It defines a
consistent way of encoding multilingual text. Unicode characters are
represented in one of three encoding forms: a 32-bit form (UTF-32), a 16-bit
form (UTF-16), and an 8-bit form (UTF-8). UTF-8 has been designed for ease
of use with existing ASCII-based systems and it is usually the default encoding
that you should be using on any webpage. Setting up the right encoding will
ensure that your website's contents will be correctly displayed. Most Content
Management Systems (CMS) already handle all content as UTF-8 encoded
text.

30. Flexible Design
If possible, use a highly flexible or "fluid" design that
allows pages to scale based on what content is in them. If
we take an English word as a base, the same word in
Russian could be up to 60% longer, while in many Asian
languages it could be less than a half the width. Based on
the complexity of Asian languages, you may need to scale
fonts by about a 120% so they are legible. So, as a rule of
thumb, you should avoid using fixed sized structures with
text in it - space should be allowed to expand or contract
in accordance with the size of the text.

31. Adding "Culture" to the mix
Our culture affects the way we see the physical world and the meanings we
attribute to objects in our environment. As noted before, culture is shaped by
our perception of the word (how we select, filter, organize and interpret
information), symbolism (a person's capacity to respond to or use a system of
significant symbols used to understand their environment and create a social
reality) and behavior (what forces us to behave and react the way we do). If
you're designing a website for a culturally diverse audience, you should
carefully consider what visual representations you use on your website, as
their meanings can vary considerably from culture to culture.

32. Perception
There are many factors that
affect perception. One of the
most important and easiest
factors to adjust after website
localization is color. People
from different cultures do not
perceive colors in the same
way. The next chart gives
some examples of color and
their meaning in different
cultures.

33. Naturally you can't
accommodate every single
culture with your design. But
if your website is correctly
structured and you have your
content separated from your
design (as you should),
adjusting the main "theme" of
a website is as easy as
dropping a couple of selectors
on the main CSS with a
lang=xxx attribute selector.

34. Symbolism
We all use symbols, almost unconsciously, on a daily basis.
We don't even have to think about them as we take their
meaning for granted. But there are times when the same
symbol could mean two completely different things from
one culture to another. One of the common examples is
the Swastika: most of us will associate it with the Nazi
movement. But for Hindus, it is the symbol of good luck
and well-being. The swastika is used in all Hindu yantras
and religious designs.

35. Symbolism
Another seemingly harmless example is the "thumbs-up"
gesture. Many countries recognize this as a sign of
approval or confirmation, and a graphic designer looking
for a graphical way to let users know that they have
successfully completed an action might be tempted to
base an icon on this image. However, in modern day
Afghanistan, Iraq and parts of Greece, Italy and France
this simple gesture can be considered to be very impolite.
In fact it is often regarded as the equivalent of the
"middle finger salute" used in the UK and USA.

36. Behavior
Behavior is defined by the preceding cultural values :
Collectivism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance,
Masculinity-Femininity and High-Low Context. Behavior is
what it "drives" us to do something and it is an entire
topic by itself. Basic behavior is influenced by the tone of
the writing in content, images, layout, etc. It has a big
influence on any "Call-to-Action", as they are tightly
connected.

37. Behavior
This concept is the hardest point to
implement, as it may involve
significant design changes,
modification to the tone of the
writing, and swapping images. For
instance, a woman in a scanty
swimsuit draped over a red sports car
would be inappropriate for many
global target markets.

38. Points to achieve cultural customization
As you can see, creating a culturally correct website could
be as huge task if you want to do it "by the book." But
most of these tasks can be accomplished by doing
moderate research on target locales, coding the website
following the recommended standards, and adjusting the
localized website content to avoid insulting the target,
global audience.

39. Points to achieve cultural customization
The first items (using Unicode
and flexible design) should not
have a big impact on the
website localization budget. If
the design process took colors
and symbols into
consideration, probably only
minor adjustments would be
required, based on the locale,
with minimal cost.

40. Points to achieve cultural customization
Behavior is the hardest
point to achieve, not only
because of the technical
issues (you may need to
have different templates
for different regions) but
also because maintenance
costs can sometimes be
very high.

41. Japanese Website Customization
Considerations and Symbols
An ancient culture like Japan has accrued a
long list of symbols and icons that convey
special cultural meaning. It is important to
be aware of these cultural connotations to
avoid any cultural blunders and inadvertent
use of offensive symbols.

42. Examples of cultural connotations
・Tai (Sea bream) fish are considered lucky
as the word rhymes with "medetai," the
Japanese word for auspicious.
・Koi have been developed for their beauty
and are considered a symbol of strength,
courage, and patience.
・A white carnation symbolizes death.
・The word "four" in Japanese sounds like
death and items packaged in fours are
unpopular.
・Black cats are considered unlucky.
・Chopsticks should not be stuck into rice as
that symbolizes death.

43. References
¨The Culturally Customized Web Site¨
Nitish Singh, Arun Pereira Taylor & Francis, 2005/04/06 - 163 pages
¨Culturally Customizing Websites for Immigrant Communities in the United States¨
Baack, Daniel W.; Singh, Nitish; Baack, Donald, Journal of promotion management : JPM.- Binghamton, NY : Haworth Press,
ISSN 1049-6491, ZDB-ID 13284459. - Vol. 19.2013, 1, p. 38-53
¨Niamh Davis When Internet Marketing is your passion!¨
http://www.niamhdavis.com/my-portfolio/cultural-customization/
¨The Jensen Localization Blog¨
http://blog.jensen-localization.com/2013/09/the-art-of-culturally-customizing-a-website.html
¨The Culturally Customized Web Site By Nitish Singh And Arun Pereira¨
http://cindyking.biz/book-review-the-culturally-customized-web-site-by-nitish-singh-and-arun-pereira/
¨Dave Weston | Success¨
http://daveweston.wordpress.com/2012/12/23/177/
¨Wikipedia - Internationalization and localization¨
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization

44. Resources
¨Woman Excite Japan¨
http://woman.excite.co.jp/
¨UNIQLO¨
http://www.uniqlo.com/jp/
http://www.uniqlo.com/us/home
¨Cyber Agent¨
http://www.cyberagent.co.jp/corporate/ceo/
¨BEAMS¨
http://www.beams.co.jp/
¨NISSIN CUP NOODLE¨
http://www.cupnoodle.jp/game/index.html
¨SANRIO¨
http://www.sanrio.co.jp/
¨THE HOFSTEDE CENTRE¨
http://geert-hofstede.com/united-states.html