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Compares the perceptions of Malaysians (representing eastern, Asian culture) and Australians (representing western, European culture) for four Web site design characteristics – atmospherics, news stories, signs and products and services – as part of the integrated Internet marketing model. Under controlled laboratory conditions, two groupings of 30 subjects evaluated eight Web sites – four in Malaysia and four in Australia – in the retail and services sectors. Hypothesises that the predominant culture is not generalised to another culture. Some tentative support for the research premise is found since where a group’s perceptions for Web design characteristics and their effectiveness was significantly higher, it was for sites originating in that group’s country. Furthermore, perceptions both support and contradict previous research suggesting that Australians prefer an environment of low context and high explicit communications while Asians operate in an environment of high context that stresses implicit communications.

With the growth of worldwide e‐commerce, companies are increasingly targeting foreign online consumers. However, there is a dearth of evidence as to whether global consumers prefer to browse and buy from standardized global web sites or web sites adapted to their local cultures. This study provides evidence from five different countries as to whether global consumers prefer local web content or standardized web content. The study also measures how the degree of cultural adaptation on the web affects consumer perception of site effectiveness.