Luxury brand websites content analysis of Chinese and English languages: The explorations of authenticity, country-of-origin, and product category

Despite economic downturns in the Pacific Rim in the 1990s, the most prominent region demonstrating the luxury trends is referred to as "Greater China," including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. LVMH estimates that as early as 2009, Chinese customers will be the number one purchasers of luxury goods in the world (Socha, 2005, p.2). The relevant importance of luxury branding in Greater China has not received a great deal of academic attention.;Recently, luxury brands have established websites to directly communicate with current and potential consumers. Online marketing for luxury goods also is beginning to have a significant impact. To fill the gap in the literature, the current study explores luxury brand websites in Chinese and English language in terms of website characteristics, standardization versus adaptation, product category, country-of-origin, cultural viewpoints and authenticity. A total number of 53 luxury brands are chosen because they are referred to in most academic papers on luxury.;The findings suggest that only nine out of the sample websites have e-retailing. Email is the most common two-way communication for luxury brands. Chinese-language counterparts in English with Chinese luxury brand websites are highly standardized with the English-language counterparts. There were only eight adapted luxury brand websites, predominately in the automobile product category, whose country-of-origin was German. The extent of luxury brand websites' standardization varies by different product category and country-of-origin. Greater COO image is used in English with Chinese language luxury brand websites than in English without Chinese ones.;Cultural factors do not play an important role in luxury online branding. Cultural dimensions do have statistical significant associations with authenticity. The construction of an authenticity index is the exclusive contribution of the current study. While luxury brands' natural authenticity is the lowest scored, exceptional authenticity is scored highest. As the authenticity scores vary with different product category and country-of-origin, it was found to be equally distributed on English with Chinese and English without Chinese luxury brands' websites.