An empirical study of audience impressions of B2C web pages in Japan, China and the UK

Negative impressions that arise during a first interaction with a Business-to-Customer web page often have the unpleasant side effect to destroy a firm s efforts in achieving B2C electronic commerce on the WWW. This paper verifies the relation between audience impressions and the visual style of a B2C web page. In comparison to previous work, the experimental procedure was greatly improved. It was therefore expected that this leads to improved results with higher reliability. Moreover, this study considered the impressions of Japanese, Chinese, and English subjects to investigate differences and consistencies in impressions, which are based on the underlying culture. Three empirical studies based on self-report questionnaires were conducted in Japan, China and the UK. The studies measured the subjects impressions of various B2C web pages that showed eight design factors. The evaluation values for 17 impression factors and their antonym terms were collected in the questionnaires. The studies in China and the UK were conducted using the same procedure as in Japan. Sign tests of the results show a significant difference in subjects impressions corresponding to changes in design factors. Moreover, the results show cross-cultural consistencies in various impressions but also several differences between the subject groups. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the empirical results for the visual design of international B2C web pages in terms of target impressions. 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.