Multiple mental categorizations of culture-laden website design

Abstract

We advance the argument that a culture-laden retail website design elicits multiple mental categorizations in consumers: categorizations in relation to the consumers’ own culture and categorizations in relation to the product category. We study interactions of these mental categorizations and examine which of the two types dominates the other in terms of the strength of its impact on attitude toward the website and purchasing intentions. Further, we challenge the relevance of the well-known “identity accessibility effect” as we demonstrate that successful activation of a chronic cultural identity through exposure to a culture-laden website design is contingent on the suitability of the product category to accommodate cues of that culture. The tests of the study’s hypotheses rely on data from an initial thought listing test, and a subsequent experiment using data gathered from French mainstream and Maghrebian minority consumers living in France.