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1 Introduction
A company's corporate image is very important and it can be conveyed through visual images. A company's visual image is the representation that it portrays to consumers through visual signs. These include colours, images, size, language, etc. These visual indicators are used to create brand awareness because they can be seen everywhere in magazines, newspapers, billboards and web sites ([40] Scott, 1994), transmitting a meaning for consumers.
Nowadays, company or brand visual images within web sites are an important part of a marketing strategy, because when making purchase choices visual images are usually looked at first, therefore although it is not the only way to communicate a message, it is one of the most important ([51] Smith, 1991). Virtual images are the easiest way of communicating visual messages, proving to have a positive impact on consumers' responses ([10] Bush et al. , 1998). This is probably because the customer can go on a company's web site to see further information about the company and/or product, finding additional data within minutes.
Recently, many companies have started to standardize their visual communication to make the marketing campaign easier. But all visual communications cannot be completely standardized. Implementing cultural dimensions into visual communications and web pages will prove to be successful because the company is making their product or service appealing to the target consumer. That is, companies have to decide whether to standardize their visual communication or create different campaigns for each country ([14] Cutler et al. , 1992). When images are fully standardized the visual communication elements are kept the same across countries' images ([34] Nelson and Paek, 2007). [14] Cutler et al. (1992) go on to state that even if visual communications are standardized, most are only done so to a certain extent. So, the best thing a company can do is to adopt major cultural issues and values of a country when designing its visual images through internet ([6] Banerjee, 2008). Also, as [16] Cyr and Trevor-Smith (2004) proved, web site design elements (including but not limited to symbols, colour, language, content, etc.) should differ significantly among cultures in order to improve consumers' responses because significant differences when interpreting visual images really do exist across cultures ([9] Bulmer and Buchanan-Oliver, 2006)....