Recent research using eye tracking has shown that Japanese and Westerners scan for visual information in quite different ways. The findings can have practical implications for marketers both in terms of how images are laid out but also how emotions are communicated when those images involve certain social contexts. JMI takes a closer look at these emerging insights into cultural-based behaviors.

Recent research conducted by both market research companies and scientists has uncovered behavioral differences in the ways in which Westerners and Japanese analyze images and extract information. These differences could have important implications for the ways in which the advertising campaigns and websites of global companies are adapted to meet the needs of consumers in Japan and the West.

Western concentration on a central figure vs Eastern holism?

The fundamental difference that has been highlighted in the recent research is that people raised in Western cultures tend to isolate the central subject in images from its surroundings, while in contrast East Asians tend to scan an image over a broader field that includes the surroundings and context of the subject. In fact the context and environment of a subject seems to have a significantly greater importance for East Asians. The implication being that differences in culture can modulate visual behavior and hence result in differences in perception.

Evidence of this phenomenon has been with us for a long time, and is seen, for example, in differences between Eastern and Western art. An analysis¹ conducted of East Asian and Euro-American portraits from the 16th century though the 20th century shows that in Western portraits the figure occupies a larger proportion of the overall picture, while in East Asian portraits the figure tends to be relatively smaller, with the background scene more visible. Overall the ratio of the model's face to the size of the entire visual field was significantly smaller in East Asian paintings. The same researchers gave cameras to students and asked them to take photographs of people. Again, the model took up more space in the Western photographs than their Japanese equivalents.

This tendency among East Asians to pay more attention to context is aligned with their more "holistic" patterns of attention for perceiving people and objects in general.

This contrasts with the Western tendency to exhibit "analytic" patterns of attention that divide reality into categories. Westerners therefore find it easier to isolate an object from its context, and concentrate more fully on that object. East Asians do not find it so easier, as they prefer to take in the big picture.

One area of marketing where these cultural-based behavioral patterns are seen, and can play a significant role, is that of website design and usability.

JMI's partner agency eye-square ( www.eye-square.com ) is a world leader in the field of web usability. A recent study conducted by the firm in Germany and Japan used eye tracking to compare how Germans and Japanese viewed the homepages of global companies in these respective markets. The websites were chosen for the their consistency of design between the two countries and several product categories were evaluated.

The results for Hilton Hotels, shown above, were typical of the findings. German participants tended to focus in on a smaller area of the homepage, paying more attention to that area and for a longer time. In contrast, Japanese participants tended to move their eyes rapidly over the whole of the page, scrolling down and scanning text in areas that Germans paid little or no attention to.

Clearly, this would have profound implications on placement of key messages and calls to action, especially in the case of the German site, where such key messages might be missed.

A group of scientists at the University of Alberta, led by professor Takahiko Masuda, has now taken this research a stage further by investigating how these cultural differences in viewing behaviors can result in differences in perceptions for Japanese and Western people when they look at the same image. The results have been published in the Journal or Personality and Social Psycology².

The experiment involved assembling pictures containing a single person in the foreground and four people in the background. The emotional expressions of the foreground and background characters were then modified to look happy, sad or angry.

For Japanese participants, it was found that nearly three-quarters of the sample said that their perception of the person in the foreground was influenced by the emotions of background figures.

In contrast, nearly three-quarters of North Americans said that the figures in the background didn't affect them at all.

Eye tracking measures confirmed, much as been seen in the website tests, that Japanese gazes flitted over the background, while the North Americans fixed on the central figure.

This would seem to match well with empirical observations that people raised in the Western tradition often find it easy to isolate a person from its surroundings, while East Asians are more accustomed to read the air ("kuuki wo yomu" in Japanese) by taking into account environmental factors.

Clearly these fundamental differences in the ways that East Asians and Westerners take in visual stimuli could have profound implications for marketers. For instance in the field of packaging design, it may be that "stopping power" could be more important in Western markets - to make sure that a product's packaging is the one that customers become fixated on - while "holding power" could be seen as being more important among East Asians tin order to keep the attention of those wondering eyes.

Today we find ourselves at the only the earliest stages of this cultural-based, behavioral research. As experimental (and market research) data accumulates it may be that we'll find that more attention needs to be paid to layout when it comes to adapting the visual messages conveyed by global brands in order to fit to the requirements of local audiences.

References:

1. Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan & Nisbett
2. Masuda et al; Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 2008, vol 94 No3