Experiencing commercial videos for online shopping: A cross-cultural user's design approach

Although online shopping has become a popular and convenient instrument for companies to buy and sell products, the design of these web-shops does not always offer the rich multisensory experiences that physical retailing offers. In the chapter, the authors argue that introducing audio-visual contents in the design could provide dynamic multisensory information to offer more engaging experiences to the consumer. Despite existing controversies regarding universalism of the emotional experiences induced by perceptual processes, the authors present evidence that suggests cultural modulations of videos experiences. Spanish and Finnish participants interacted with audiovisual products depicting videos of a culturally loaded brand design. Content analysis of participants' verbalizations helped to identify categories and subcategories that defined the representation of the video elements and their relative weight depending on the cultural background of the viewer. Although results indicate common elements affecting viewers of the two countries, they differ in the relative weight to global aesthetics features.