Localization and cultural adaptation on the web: An explorative study in the fashion domain

Abstract

The use of the internet and of the (mass) media have in some way technically simplified the internationalization processes of companies, reducing the time needed in order to exchange data and information and facilitating the resolution of operational issues. Within this environment, fashion plays a relevant role; in fact, a considerable part of website and e-commerce offers come from this sector. When facing new markets, fashion companies cannot only provide unique and captivating products, but they also need to offer an opportune and personalized communication, able to cross all the cultural and linguistic boundaries that might occur. In order to face this issue a well-designed localization strategy is required. According to Mele et al. [1] localization can be defined as a “cultural translation” and when applied to online contents it consists in the adaptation of different elements such as texts, images, videos, but also units of measure, sizes or calendars. The paper aims, in this sense, to address the lack of literature concerning localization practices in the online fashion environment, providing a first framework on the depiction of the different cultural values on different fashion websites. The present study is an exploratory benchmarking of the field, realized through a comparative research, based on previous studies related to the depiction of Hofstede’s [2] and Hall’s [3] cultural values provided by Singh et al. and Yalcin et al. [4, 5].