Cultural Adaptation of Websites: A Comparative Study of Portuguese and Dutch Websites

Abstract

In a globalized world cultural adaptation has become a vital strategy for companies that desire to succeed beyond borders. However, adapt a website is not only to translate the local content of a website to the native language. The content analysis methodology was used to study a sample of Portuguese and Dutch websites collected from the “list of Fortune 500 companies and their websites”. The objective was to evaluate the extent of cultural adaptation of websites to Portuguese and Dutch based on Hofstede and Hall frameworks. The results showed that only the masculinity/femininity dimension were supported meaning that the websites were culturally adapted for both Portuguese and Dutch websites. The high/low-context culture hypothesis, although statistical significant, show that only the Dutch websites were culturally adapted. The collectivistic/individualistic dimension, although statistical significant, showed that only Dutch websites has been culturally adapted. The hypotheses H2 and H3 are both not statistical significant.

Keywords

• corporate websites
• cultural adaptation
• portuguese and dutch websites
• hofstede and hall dimensions
• content analysis