Computer-assisted culturalization process integration into product-website design

The Industry 4.0 and the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) allow industrial companies to innovate by more efficiently integrating customers' information into the product's design. The products can now be more quickly adapted, optimized, and customized according to a large panel of customer preferences from different cultures. The acquisition of customers requires the creation of websites capable of reaching a target audience potentially interested in the products. It allows the creation of a bidirectional information channel between the stakeholders (managers, designers, engineers) and future customers. It enables customers to discover new products and stakeholders to obtain their opinion in real time through the website. However, the technical website characteristics and the product description need to be integrated and adequately adapted to this target audience, which is characterized by a certain culture and a customer profile. Webmasters need to be assisted in this task because the adaptation of the website and the product description to a target audience is based on multiple, heterogeneous and complex criteria. In this paper, an approach is proposed to assist webmasters in the culturalization process integration into the product-website design. Based on criteria selected from the literature, this approach allows for better information integration through the Web by assisting the webmaster in the website design. A first case study conducted on experimental car manufacturers' webpages using a prototype tool called CACP (Computer-Assisted Culturalization Process) illustrates the difference of product webpage perception between Chinese and French visitors. A second case study conducted with the webmaster of an international industrial company validates the effectiveness of the proposed approach.