Website Design Guidelines: High Power Distance and High Context Culture

Abstract

This paper aims to address the question of offering a culturally adapted website for a local audience. So far, in the website design arena the vast majority of studies examined mainly Western and the American (low power distance and low context) culture disregarding possible cultural discrepancies. This study fills this gap and explores the key cultural parameters that are likely to have an impact on local website design for Asian-Eastern culture  high power distance and high context correlating with both Hofstede’s and Hall’s cultural dimensions. It also reviews how website localisation may be accomplished more effectively by extracting the guidelines from two different yet compatible cultural dimensions: high power distance and high context.