Pepsi across cultures: analysis and cross-cultural comparison of Pepsi websites

Abstract: Nowadays we live in a world where technologies provide great opportunities for crosscultural communication. That’s why it’s really important to be aware of cultural differences and its possible influence on the people’s behavior. This study describes and analyzes the influence of culture on web design and marketing strategies, with special focus on analysis and comparison of Pepsi’s websites as an instrument of communication with the worldwide audience. The main purpose of the study is to try to throw light on the issues related to cultural adaptation of marketing strategies when doing business across cultural borders. Combination of methods, such as literature study, qualitative and quantitative analysis of websites allows seeing correlations between characteristics of cultures and web design in different countries. Results show that there are differences in web design among cultures, which can be explained by cultural traits and characteristics of the society, such aspects as presence of people, their age and genders, marketing campaigns in focus, symmetry in layout, represented information, usage of effects and link to historical information. However, it also showed that there are many exceptions which cannot be really explained from cultural perspective. Company’s choice concerning web design can be influenced by cultures but at the same time there are many different issues influencing on decision-making like marketing strategy and politics.