Changing Perceptions of Companies’ Website From Foreign to Local: An Experimental Study of Website Localization Strategies

Website localization is important for companies to do business in the international market. This paper-in-progress explores website localization strategies and their effects. Drawing from social identity paradigm, we develop two website localization strategies: Similarity strategy (leveraging similarities with local people to positively influence consumer attitude towards foreign companies’ websites in website design) and Prosocial strategy (bringing benefits to local people to enhance consumer attitude towards foreign companies’ websites in website design). We also propose hypotheses about how these two strategies affect perceived website localization, trust and purchase intention through perceived similarity and perceived support. An experimental study will be conducted to validate the hypotheses in Mainland, China