Experiencing Commercial Videos for Online Shopping : A Cross-Cultural User's Design Approach

Abstract

In recent years online shopping has become a popular and convenient instrument for companies to buy and sell products. However, the design of these web-shops does not offer the rich multisensory experiences than physical retailing offers. In the paper we argue that audio-visual contents could provide dynamic multisensory information to offer more engaging experiences to the consumer, but to achieve this goal, audio-visual contents need to be adjusted to the cultural characteristics of the users. Despite controversies regarding universalism of the emotional experiences induced by perceptual processes, we present evidence that suggests cultural modulations of videos experiences. In the reported empirical study, Spanish and Finnish participants interacted with audiovisual products depicting videos of a culturally loaded brand design. Content analysis of participants' verbalizations helped to identify categories and subcategories that defined the representation of the video elements and their relative weight depending on the cultural background of the viewer. Although results indicate common elements affecting viewers of the two countries, they differ in the relative weight to global aesthetics features. The results are discussed in light of current theories of cultural universalism. In addition, this study can be utilized in designing audio-visual representations of products for online shops taking into account the cultural factors affecting the design practice.