How Country Characteristics Affect the Perceived Value of Web Sites
Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp & Inge Geyskens
Journal of Marketing, July 2006

In this article the main question is whether the factors of the perceived value derived by the consumers visiting a brand manufacturer’s Web site are systematically moderated by the country-level institutional context in which consumers live.
The subject of the data collection was Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In the websites of these CPG companies the authors of this article formed a questionnaire to reflect the perception of the visitors to these sites. There were 16 CPG companies (Heineken, Henkel, Danone, P&G, Unilever etc.) and were 30 websites belonging to the brands of these companies. 8886 visitors filled this questionnaire from different countries.

The authors hypothesized a regression model to forecast the perception of the visitors. The regression model consist of some important variables such as consumption experiences, web site characteristics, moderating effect of country characteristics and some complementary variables such as age and gender.
From this regression model some of these variables turn out to be significant in perception (such as Customization level of website, pleasure coefficient etc.) and some are not significant (such as age or gender)

From these significant and nonsignificant terms in the model some of important outcomes are that :
-Perceived privacy/security is more important in countries characterized by a weak rule of law.
-Perceived privacy/security and customization have a greater effect in individualistic countries than in collectivistic countries.
-Cultural congruity weighs more heavily in countries high on national identity.
-The emotional experience is more important in shaping perceived value judgments in individualistic countries.
-Utilitarian experience is more important in collectivistic societies, but this effect does not reach statistical significance.

In summary, the findings provide broad support for hypothesized conceptual model and the relevance of including country-level, institutional constructs for understanding the perceived value consumers derive from visiting a brand manufacturer’s Web site.
Their results show that the relationships between perceived Web site value and its drivers are systematically and predictably moderated by the institutional context in which consumers live.

The findings of this study are important from a managerial perspective because they may improve the understanding of why certain drivers do not significantly affect perceived value in some countries. After this article several CPG companies revised their websites accordingly to create better consumer perception.

Ömer Kerem Seçkin
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