Cultural analysis of Pepsi Website as a tool for strategic marketing.

2. PROFILE: PEPSICO INC. (PEP)
PepsiCo, Inc. (PepsiCo), incorporated on November 13, 1986,
is a global food and beverage company, having operations in
over 200 countries. The Company operates through six
segments: Frito-Lay North America (FLNA), Quaker Foods
North America (QFNA), Latin America Foods (LAF), which
includes its food and snack businesses in Latin America ;
PepsiCo Americas Beverages (PAB), which includes its North
American and Latin American beverage businesses; PepsiCo
Europe (Europe), which includes beverage, food and snack
businesses in Europe and South Africa, and PepsiCo Asia,
Middle East and Africa (AMEA), which includes beverage,
food and snack businesses in AMEA, excluding South Africa.

3. This presentation focuses on analysis and comparison of
Pepsi's website in different countries with respect to culture,
using Hofstede cultural analysis and how the information
represented in the web design relates to culture. The main
purpose of the presentation is to try to throw light on the
Issues related to cultural adaptation when doing business
across cultural borders. 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.

4. GENERAL STRUCTURE OF PEPSI WEBSITE
Pepsi websites aim to present Pepsi (as a product and as a
company) all around the world. Although Pepsi websites look
different they all have something in common. What first draws
visitor’s attention is usually current marketing campaigns; many of
the Pepsi’s first pages have a commercial, video or picture of the
new actions in the center. All Pepsi websites have descriptions or
pictures of products, e.g. Pepsi, Pepsi MAX, Diet Pepsi; many times
on the first page the logo of Pepsi is represented. Pepsi websites
usually have links to official Pepsi accounts in social media, e.g.
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube in different countries. Contact
information is one that was found on every Pepsi webpage. The
atmosphere of happiness, joy and youth as a general marketing
strategy of Pepsi is reflected on all websites, e.g. the word “party” is
common.

5. ANALYSIS OF PEPSI WEB-DESIGN USING HOFSTEDE’S
FIVE CULTURAL DIMENSIONS
Hofstede identified five dimensions of national cultures, such
as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs.
collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity and long-term vs. short-
term orientation. For every explored country was calculated its
own index for each dimension. According to Hofstede, the
dimensions reflect the basic problems which all societies face
with but the ways how they cope with those difficulties are
diverse that vary cultures. Hofstede believes that cultural
differences cannot disappear from national traditions even of
the facts of globalization and its influence.

6. 1. IDV INDEX (PRESENCE AND NUMBER OF PEOPLE)
Presence and number of people on websites is one
of the features analyzed in this presentation. Earlier
research shows that a lower IDV index reflects
collectivism and is related to higher number of
people represented on the websites. The opposite
is true for higher individualistic cultures which have
fewer or even no people on their websites. Below,
the results for Pepsi websites are presented in
Table 1.

7. Country / Index IDV
Portugal 27
Romania 30
Arab World 38
Slovakia 52
Israel 54
Malta 59
Poland 60
Finland 63
Norway 69
Sweden 71
Belgium 75
Canada 80
Hungary 80
Netherlands 80
Australia 90
USA 91
The data shows that 81% of
countries (13 from 16) which
have no people on the main
page of their Pepsi websites
have high-IDV, i.e. are rather
individualistic. Presenting a
group/groups of people on
website symbolizes
collective, relationships and
connection within it which is
reflected collectivistic
cultures. The results for
Pepsi are presented in Table
2 overleaf
TABLE 1: COUNTRIES THAT DON’T HAVE PEOPLE ON THE PEPSI WEBSITE

8. Country / Index IDV
South Korea 18
China 20
Singapore 20
Thailand 20
Malaysia 26
Mexico / Chile /
Colombia
30
Japan 46
India 48
France 71
Denmark 74
United Kingdom 89
Counting Pepsi websites that
have group/groups of people
on the main page, it turned
out 73% (8 from 11) of
countries have Low-IDV,
which reflects a tendency of
collectivistic cultures to
correlate people with the
group To illustrate these
results, Pepsi websites from
the USA (IDV=91) and South
Korea (IDV=18) are
presented. overleaf, in
Picture 1 and Picture 2 the
snapshots from these
websites are presented:
TABLE 2: COUNTRIES THAT HAVE GROUP OF PEOPLE IN THEIR WEBSITE

9. PICTURE 1 SHOWS PEPSI WEBSITE IN USA PICTURE 2 SHOWS PEPSI WEBSITE IN SOUTH K
P I C T U R E 1
Showing Individualistic culture
P I C T U R E 2
Showing Collectivistic Culture

10. 2. MASCULINITY VS. FEMINITY (GENDER)
T A B L E 3 : C O U N T R I E S
W I T H O N L Y M A L E I N T H E I R
W E B S I T E
Country/
Index
MAS
Denmark 16
Spain 42
France 43
Malaysia 50
India 56
Czech
republic
57
United
kingdom
66
Mexico 69
Italy 70
Switzerland 70
T A B L E 4 : C O U N T R I E S
W I T H O N L Y F E M A L E I N
T H E I R W E B S I T E
Country/
index
MAS
netherland 14
Uruguay 38
Turkey 45
Argentina 56
Germany 66
Austria 79
Countries
with
Both gender
country/index MAS
Sweden 5
Thailand 34
Russia 36
South Korea 39

11. As it shows, the majority of Pepsi websites (70% (8 from 11))
where only males are presented, are the countries which have
higher MAS index (Table 3). In masculine cultures men have
more distinguished roles in the society from women and
usually higher and more powerful positions, that’s why Pepsi
on the majority of its websites from the so called masculine
cultures represents men. Opposite is true for the countries
with lower MAS. The Pepsi websites were found only women
and/or both men and women. In Table 4 and 5, 4 out of 11
countries which have only female and/or both male and
female have relatively low MAS.

12. Here, it is the man who
presents the product and
the main message
MAS = 70.
Here, people from both
genders were presented,
an opposite of what is
seen in picture 3. MAS =
5
PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION OF MAS DIMENSION IN ITALY (MAS=7O) AND SWEDEN (MAS=5)
SEE PICTURES 3 AND 4.

13. 3. POWER DISTANCE INDEX (AGE)
Earlier research shows that the websites from more hierarchical
countries (higher PDI) tend to use people with higher age
rather than younger (examined element - age of people).
Analyzing Pepsi websites, the websites of the countries where
people in website are relatively older (>25) are compared to
relatively younger (<25). The reason for this classification and
choice of age range is Pepsi’s target audience: young people
in general, that’s why in dividing the age level for comparison
was chosen so relatively young age (25). See tables 5 and 6

14. Country/Inde
x
PDI
Switzerland 34
Argentina 49
Italy 50
Japan 54
Uruguay 61
Turkey 66
France 68
India 77
Mexico 81
Malaysia 104
Country/Inde
x
PDI
Austria 11
Denmark 18
United
kingdom
35
Germany 35
Netherlands 38
Czech
republic
57
Spain 57
South Korea 60
Thailand 64
China 80
Russia 93
TABLE 5 SHOWS WHICH HAVE OLDER THAN “25” TABLE 6 SHOWS COUNTRIES THAT HAVE YOUNG PEOPLE,
ON PEPSI WEBSIT LESS THAN 25, ON THE PEPSI WEBSITE

15. As can be seen from Table 5, 90% (9 from 10) countries, where
on the Pepsi website presented older people, have relatively
high-PDI. If to count countries which tend to present rather
young people on Pepsi website it turn that 45% (5 from 11)
countries have low-PDI (compare with 90% on websites with
older, Table 6). Possible explanation that still a quite large
number of countries with high-PDI have relatively young
people on Pepsi website is the main marketing strategy of
Pepsi. The target audience of Pepsi is young people, and
illustrating the website with older people is against their main
strategy.

16. PICTORIAL COMPARISON OF PEPSI WEB DESIGN IN MEXICAN PEPSI WEBSITE
(PDI=50) AND PEPSI WEBSITE IN AUSTRIA (PDI=11)
F I G 5 : P E P S I W E B S I T E I N
M E X I C O
Fig 5
F I G 6 : P E P S I W E B S I T E
I N A U S T R I A
Fig 6

17. 4. UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE INDEX
Differences in amount of information are often motivated by cultural
attitudes to uncertainty avoidance. USA has UA index with middle
measure (UAI=46), Belgium has UAI=94 which is one of the highest
indexes. The higher UA, the more simple the website is in terms of
presented elements on the page and dividing presented information
in relatively less sections, so it makes easier the process of
searching of the information on the website. To examine this
influence by quantitative analysis, Pepsi websites have been divided
into groups by visual difference in amount of information on the main
page (studies element). Below, in Table 7 the countries with little
information on their Pepsi websites are presented.

18. Country/inde
x
UAI
Australia 30
India 35
U.k 36
Ireland 40
Italy 50
Malaysia 51
Norway 75
China 85
Poland 85
Romania 86
Russia 90
South korea 93
Belgium 94
Spain 95
Turkey 104
Note
69% (11 from 16) of
countries with relatively
little information on the
main page of Pepsi
website have high-UAI.
TABLE 7: COUNTRIES WITH LITTLE INFORMATION ON THEIR MAIN PAGE

19. Country/Inde
x
LTO
Czech 13
Norway 20
Canada 23
U K 25
USA 29
Germany 31
Australia 31
Poland 32
Sweden 33
Netherland 44
India 61
South Korea 75
china 118
Long/short term
orientation is a sense of
attitude to the history
. Table 8. Countries that
don’t have a link to history
page on Pepsi website
The results show that
77% (10 from 13) of
countries that don’t have
a link to page with history
are primarily short-term
oriented countries
5.LONG/SHORT-TERM ORIENTATION DIMENSION

20. Since short-term oriented cultures focus more on immediate results
history page would not be so interesting for them. In this terms
research confirms the influence of LTO dimension on web design for
different cultures. In an illustration is presented in Picture 7 and
Picture 8
On the Czech Republic Pepsi (LTO=13) website there is no special
link to page or at least section with historical information. Otherwise
Japanese website (representative of long-term oriented culture,
LTO=80) has special historical page where historical information
even divided in three topics: Pepsi history in Japan, world and history
of Pepsi logo

21. Picture 7: Pepsi website in
Czech Republic
Picture 8: Pepsi website in
Japan (History page)
COMPARING PEPSI WEBSITE IN CZECH AND JAPAN

22. EFFECT OF CULTURE ON GLOBALIZATION
Globalization has allowed for the spread of custom,
languages, and products. Globalization has allowed for
people to be apple to attain goods and services not previously
available. You can find Pepsi, Coca-Cola, KFC in most major
cities throughout the world. Globalization has allowed people
to become familiar with the culture of other countries allowing
for a greater understanding. While globalization opens doors,
it also leads to blending of culture and the deterioration of
unique cultural difference. The negative of globalization
include gap between rich and poor, reduction in individual
sovereignty of a nation, environmental pollution and
susceptibility of all parts of the world, suffering with recession
in other countries

23. CONCLUSIONS
It’s relatively easy to create a website from a technical perspective,
but to create the website which can allow effective communication on
the global market is more complicated. It’s not only about direct
translation from language into language; some cultural awareness is
important.
The presentation shows that PepsiCo takes at least to some extent
into consideration differences between cultures and tries to adopt its
marketing strategies on the global market to local cultures.
The results show that PepsiCo pays attention to the most expressed
cultural traits and through them differentiate websites. So the data
reveals that PepsiCo makes some adaptations on its websites.

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