Revision with unchanged content. In these times of rapid increase of
internet usage, the question arises for multinational companies (MNCs)
whether to standardise or adapt their inter-net presence to different
cultural groupings or even subcultures. The authors attempted to address
this problem with an approach relatively new up to now. Global players
have already realised their opportunities to add value to their company
by setting up a high quality internet performance and a prop-erly
designed website. This raises the question whether these companies could
use their basic home country website for all cultures or if any
adaptation should be conducted. If so, it has to be determined on the
one hand to what degree an adaptation still aligns with the corporate
identity or on the other hand if the companies should rather respect the
culture of the respective market they are operating in. The overall
target of this research is therefore to assist MNCs by producing
recommendations concerning the promotion of products and services for a
particular transnational consumer group. There-fore, country-specific
websites of companies rooted in different cultural origins are selected
for this research, namely EgyptAir, Mercedes-Benz and SonyEricsson. This
publication targets at companies seeking to develop a foreign market in
particular the Arab cultural area.
