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Kansei Concepts for eCommerce Website Design in a Bicultural Environment

Article  in  International Journal of Affective Engineering · November 2015

DOI: 10.5057/ijae.IJAE-D-13-42

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International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.14 No.4 pp.317-325 (2015)
doi: 10.5057/ijae.IJAE-D-13-42

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Kansei Concepts for eCommerce Website Design

in a Bicultural Environment
– Recommendations for Interface Color Usage –

Jose Manuel GARCIA MENDOZA* and Ashu MARASINGHE**

* Graduate School of International Management, International University of Japan,
777 Kokusaicho, Minamiuonuma, Niigata 949-7248, Japan
** Nagaoka University of Technology, 1603-1 Kamitomioka, Nagaoka, Niigata 940-2188 Japan

Abstract: Nowadays e-Commerce web designers face the problems to create systems that are not only usable but also appealing, and
to improve the consumers’ interface persuasive power through engineering affective-appeal techniques. In order to contribute to meet
this challenge, this study conducted two experimental studies focusing mainly on one perceptual feature, website color. Therefore,
this researched took the aim to identify the most influential emotional and aesthetic Kansei factors for Japanese and Mexican young
adults when evaluating sports-wear e-store interfaces and their color preferences, while correlating Kansei factors to individual
colors. Results showed that the Japanese population was more critical depending on emotional arousal levels experienced on emotions
such as, cheerfulness and excitement; while seeking aesthetics of consistency, dynamicity and modernity. However, only the role and
impact of gender of an interface was effectively measured on the Mexican population. Colors preference similarities, with their
individual Kansei interpretations, were successfully mapped for males and females. The main originality of these studies lay in the
adoption of Kansei Engineering on the e-Commerce context as a systematic method to engineer consumers’ emotional and affective
responses and incorporate them into new guidelines of web design.
Keywords: Kansei, e-Commerce, Interface Design

It is through an aesthetic design that a new type of value

1. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, e-Commerce has been labeled as one
of the most wide-ranging and significant areas of current
development in the global market [1]. Nowadays,
consumers can easily access information about vendors,
compare and assess not only the quality of products but
the sites as well. Previous studies have suggested that
web developers design decisions influence the consumers’
perception of a retailer’s site [2]. Web designers generally
preferred to develop e- retail sites within the ergonomic
recommendations by the so called ‘‘golden rules’’ [3, 4];
which focus mainly on users’ cognitive and perceptual-
motor abilities, rather than on the “feel” when interacting
with a system. In recent years, the ‘‘how-to convey
feelings’’ has become a popular research topic in
Cognitive, Design and e-Commerce spheres, with
advances in the understanding of feelings, affects and
emotions [5, 6] in order to achieve more appealing retail
sites [7].
Studies have shown that consumers weigh design attri-
butes differently, depending on the type of product or
service offered by those sites [8]. These findings suggest
that designers should come up with design solutions that
are both novel and well adapted to their target users [9, 10].
can be injected onto a website, thus conveying pleasure
into consumers’ activities [11-13]. So, it is not surprising
to find that e-Commerce users nowadays look for an
emotional connectivity in interfaces they come across
with [7].
In the web design study field we also find researches
that state that users’ initial feelings toward a website are
crucial, as it is during the first few seconds of interaction
with a site that ‘‘visitors’’ resolve whether or not to
continue navigating a website [14, 15]. Since visitors’
preferences seem to be related to website’s aesthetics
and novel impressions, this study analyzed one particular
aesthetic feature that has a mayor influence on the
consumer’s first impressions: color in e-Commerce
websites.
2. PROPOSED CASE SENARIO AND RESEARCH
AIM
This research argues that colors are an important
feature of website design and that a proper understanding
of this will give web designers a theoretical framework to
influence users’ first impressions, feelings, and naviga-
tion behavior. Thus, this research was structured within
the scope of a proposed case scenario:

Received: 2013.12.20 / Accepted: 2015.09.12 Copyright © 2015 Japan Society of Kansei Engineering.
All Rights Reserved.
317
International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.14 No.4
“A company selling sportswear in the traditional
fashion (brick and mortar store) wishes to expand its
market overseas, targeting Japan or Mexico. The company
will migrate to an online shop and wishes to maintain
consistency in their web interface design while being
appealing to customers in both countries. It is in the
company’s main interest to utilize colors on the e-shop site
as a strategic advantage in order to create a novel experi-
ence in hopes to influence the arousal level and shopping
behavior of its mayor target market: young adults. ”
In that way, this research utilizing Kansei Engineering
(KE) techniques aimed to identify in two studies:
• Emotional and aesthetic Kansei Factors (KF) for Japanese
and Mexican young adults when evaluating the aesthetic
design of well-known international sports-wear web
interfaces.
• Color preferences, and colors that convey high emotional
and aesthetic values: determined from modified inter-
faces (selected on the basis of the first study results)
with predefined individual colors.
3. STUDY 1: CATEGORIZING JAPANESE AND
MEXICAN’S EA AND AA KANSEI FACTORS
3.1 Study Design & Objectives
The first study of this research attempted to explore on
the Japanese and Mexican population’s Emotional Arousal
(EA) and Aesthetic Appeal (AA) Kansei Factors (KF)
when evaluating well-known sportswear web interfaces
according to their visible differences in design. For this
purpose, 8 e-clothing sportswear websites were selected
according to specific choosing criteria. A list of Kansei
Words (KW) was prepared to fit on bipolar scales in order
to analyze KF for the EA levels of participants and the
AA conveyed by the interfaces. An online survey was
then prepared for this study, mounted on a free hosting-
site server and distributed to participants living in Japan
and Mexico. Responses were collected, filtered and then
analyzed using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
statistical method. After giving a structure to the results,
we proceeded with the creation of a control group of
interfaces (the most preferred interfaces); this procedure
was determined according to the preference mean scores
obtained. As well, interpretations were given to the
control group interfaces according to the identified EA
and AA KF.
The particular objectives for this study were:
• Recollection and identification of influential EA and
AA KF for well-known international sports-wear sites’
interfaces.
318
• Determination of the 3 most preferred interfaces for the
Japanese and Mexican population.
• Creation of control group interfaces for second study.
3.2 Experimental Material
1) Collecting the sport-wear sites and preparing the
interfaces:
An extensive research on the web was conducted in
order to identify the world leader sportswear brands. The
identified online stores were then filtered according to
criteria of high relevance for this study:
• Differ in their design characteristics (colors, design
elements, layouts, page orientations, and typography).
• Display main product segment: sportswear clothing.
• Renowned brands leaders in sportswear.
• Possess at least one site domain relevant for clients in
Japan or Mexico.
• Interface’s elements in English, Spanish or Japanese.
The results of the filtering lead to the collection of 6 e-
clothing sites (Nike, Puma, Adidas, Reebok, Columbia,
Fila). It was then determined to utilize as well 2 clothing
brands native of each country, resulting in the selection of
Atletica (Mexico) and Uniqlo (Japan).
The different sites’ interfaces, displaying products
(according to gender), were then captured; e-stores with a
domain for both countries had their interfaces captured
according to domain as well. In this way 14 interfaces were
collected and prepared (modified) for the online survey:
preparations consisted on removing any brand labels and
advertisement present on the image capture of the inter-
faces. All the modifications were done with the Adobe
Photoshop CS5.1 version.
2) Collecting Kansei Words, preparing the SD Scale
Questionnaire:
KW represent the main domain of any Kansei research
thus their importance on the preparation of any evaluation
method. This research study underwent the task to search
for proper KW to create a 5-point Semantic Differential
(SD) self-reported online survey. A list containing 15
paired bi-polar KW was created after an extensive
reading of academic papers of evaluation metrics on
emotional responses to web interfaces, products and
environments [7, 16-19]. Most of the words were
collected in English and Japanese, although others
were translated with professional criteria to Spanish
and Japanese and then revised by natives of each
language to assess their validity as adjectives.
The selected KW were then arranged into two categories:
Kansei words to assess the EA level of participants, and KW
to evaluate the AA conveyed by the interfaces. Apart from the

Kansei Concepts for eCommerce Website Design in a Bicultural Environment
EA and AA scales, an extra question was arranged in which
participants were asked to indicate how much they “liked” an
interface on a 5-point SD scale, ranging from “not at all” to
“a lot”. No intermediate labels were used on any of the scales.
3)  Participants:
For this study we had the participation of 52 Japanese
and58 Mexican individuals; all of the participants were
currently living in their home countries. The participants
were young people with an age range of 15-30 years.
• Japanese population sample consisted of 44 men and
8 women, with a mean average of 20.8 years. The
participants had a variety of backgrounds (e.g. university
students, professionals, etc.); 80.77% of them reported
to have casual online shopping habits (mean 1.09 times/
month); and none of them had an abroad experience that
lasted more than 3 months.
• Mexican population sample consisted of 36 men and 22
women, with a mean average of 22.38 years. The
participants had a variety of backgrounds (e.g. University
students, professionals, etc.); most of them (22.4%)
reported low online shopping habits (mean 0.65 times/
month); and none of them had an abroad experience that
lasted more than 3 months.
None of the participants reported to be color-blind.
4)  Study 1 Procedure:
Participants were provided with the address of the
experimental site and were asked to access. When enter-
ing on the first section of the site they had to read the
disclosure and instructions. After which, they were asked
to register into the experimental data base (DB); answer to
two “yes or no” supplementary questions inquiring online
shopping habits and abroad living experience, and if they
answered positively to any of these questions, they had to
answer related sub questions describing shopping habits
(times per month), and time spent abroad (months).
In the next section of the survey, the 14 modified interface
images were shown one by one in a random order to the
participants in the center of the screen; while on the lower
part the SD scale to assess likeness to the interface was
displayed. Participants had to indicate how much they liked
each interface before changing to the next interface image.
After the completion of the previous section, the inter-
face images were shown once again one by one in random
order; participants were then asked to assess their EA and
the AA conveyed by the interfaces utilizing the SD scales
with the bi-polar KWs.
On the last section of the survey, participants had to
read the acknowledgements of the experimental survey
signaling the end of the experiment and terminating the
connection to the DB.
319
International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.14 No.4
5)  Study 1 Results:
A.  Japan Survey Domain:
The Japanese online survey results showed that the three
most liked interfaces for the Japanese population belonged
to the Columbia, Fila, and Reebok Japan domain e-stores
with mean scores > 3.20. It was also possible to appreciate
that the e-store belonging to the Mexican domain had
mean scores < 2.70.
A PCA was run using the averaged values between the
subjects’ responses from the raw data. The eigenvalues of
the responses were then plotted in an eigenvector scree
plot in order to visualize the impact of the Factor Axes
(FA) as illustrated by Fig. 1. Following the suggestion
made by Bartholomew [20], it was possible to conclude
that the first three Kansei components (F1, F2 & F3 with
eigenvalues > 1.0) should provide a proper representation
of the KWs and FA.
Correlation maps were then plotted with the identified
FA to draw meaning of the Kansei components (F1, F2,
F3). Analysis made to the correlation maps showed that
F1 indicated a link to the emotions of happiness and
cheerfulness conveyed by the interfaces; F2 seemed to
have a link to the interfaces’ aesthetics of harmony and
consistency; while F3 suggested a link to the interfaces’
gender. In order to confirm the linkage between Kansei
variables (KWs) and FA, we compared the squared cosine
scores of each variable (Table 1): the greater the squared
cosine of a variable in a given factor, the greater the
linkage to it. The squared cosine scores obtained for the
F1 axis showed that cheerfulness (F1 = 0.818) had the
Figure 1: Japan’s PCA Eigenvalues Score Graph
Table 1:  Study 1  Japan’s KF Linkage Table
Kansei Variable Factor Linkage Cosine^2 Score Influence %
fearful-cheerful F1 -- EA 0.818 55.84%
inconsistent-consistent F2 -- AA 0.809 17.75%
feminine-masculine F3 -- AA 0.843 9.38%
International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.14 No.4
greatest linkage; consistency (F2 = 0.809) for the F2 axis;
and gender (F3 =3200.843) for the F3 axis.
B.  Mexico Survey Domain:
The Mexican online survey results showed that the three
most liked interfaces for this population belonged to the
Columbia and Fila Mexico domain and Uniqlo Japan
domain e-stores with mean scores >=3.50.
A PCA was run using the averaged values between the
subjects’ responses from the raw data. The eigenvalues of
the responses were then plotted in an eigenvector scree
plot, as shown by Fig. 2, in order to visualize the impact
of the FA. It was then concluded that the first three Kansei
components (F1, F2 & F3 with eigenvalues > 1.0) should
provide a proper representation of the KWs and FA.
Correlation maps were then made with the identified FA
in order to draw meaning from the Kansei components
(F1, F2, F3).
Analysis made to the correlation maps indicated that F1
had a link to the emotions of happiness and excitement
and to the aesthetics of fashionable; the F2 analysis
suggested that there was a link to the interfaces’ aesthetics
of consistency; while the F3 analysis showed a link to
the interfaces’ gender and the emotion of surprise.
Comparisons between the squared cosine scores of each
Kansei variable were made in order to confirm the linkage
between variables and FA (Table 2). The squared cosine
scores obtained for the F1 axis showed that happiness
(F1 = 0.873) and excitement (F1 = 0.813) had the greatest
scores and were positively correlated; the greatest score
for the F2 axis corresponded to consistency (F2 = 0.742);
and the variable of surprising (F3 = 0.239) for the F3 axis.
Figure 2: Mexico’s PCA Eigenvalues Score Graph
Table 2:  Study 1  Mexico’s KF Linkage Table
Kansei Variable Factor Linkage Cosine^2 Score Influence %
sad-happy F1 -- EA 0.873 65.61%
shy-excited F1 -- EA 0.813 65.61%
inconsistent-consistent F2 -- AA 0.742 11.41%
bored-surprised F3 -- AA 0.239 6.91%
320
6)  Study 1 Discussions:
This study reports that both populations assessed their
likeness for the websites of Columbia and Fila. These find-
ings make an encouragement to further research on the
design elements of these e-stores in hopes to formulate new
guidelines that translate to human Kansei on website design
for the Japanese and Mexican markets.
As well, this study was able to map consumer’s emotion-
al responses to e-Commerce websites and present
correlations within KWs to web interfaces. We report that
both populations appeared to be more critical depending on
the level of emotional arousal experienced. These emotions
vary on the range of happiness, cheerfulness and excite-
ment; while the findings for AA indicate that both
populations search primarily for the same characteristic on
a website, consistency. These findings are in line with what
Roseman et al. [21] claims: events that are positively
appraised as consistent elicit positive emotions. Despite the
similarities found, the Japanese population appears to be
more judgmental on aesthetics that have heavy gender
traits; however, slight traces of the same criticism were
found with the Mexican population.
In order take this research one step further, a second
study was conducted with the aim of determining the
impact of colors on the identified preferred interfaces that
both populations had in common: the Columbia and Fila
sites.
4. CATEGORIZING COLOR KANSEI FOR JAPA-
NESE AND MEXICAN POPULATIONS
1)  Study Design & Objectives:
The second study of this research conducted an explor-
atory experiment, in the context of males and females
e-retail sites, in order to determine Japanese and Mexican
preferences and perception to various colors appearing
on background elements of sports-wear interfaces.
Participants from both countries were shown various
modified interface images from the control group inter-
faces according to their domain: Columbia and Fila sites.
For this experiment, the modified versions of the control
group interfaces differed in respect of color to their origi-
nal version; 17 different hue color variations for each site,
yielding a total of 68 modified interfaces developed. No
other elements from the interfaces were modified; in this
way it was assured that there was no misleading influence
of webpage structure or balance in the experiment.
The particular objectives for this study were:
• Identify color preferences to the modified control group
interfaces.

Kansei Concepts for eCommerce Website Design in a Bicultural Environment
• Identify Kansei factors for EA and AA conveyed by
color variations.
• Determine Kansei levels of EA and AA for preferred
colors on males and females e-retail sites.
• Determine colors with high Kansei levels for the males
and females e-retail sites.
2)  Experimental Material:
A.  Determining the Colors, Utilizing HSV System:
When designing the modified versions of the interfaces,
it was important to determine that the colors to be utilized
didn’t fall under the category of “tones” or “shades” of a
color; it was necessary that the colors vary only in one
dimension. After an extensive research, we found that the
HSV color system was the most suited system for this
experiment. The HSV system allowed us to inquiry strictly
in color preferences by setting Value and Saturation
constant; variations in Hue gave us a wide range of pure
colors.
The HSV color system can be pictured as a cylindrical
geometry (Fig. 3): with its hue additive primary and
secondary colors starting with the red (0°), yellow (60°),
green (120°), cyan (180°), blue (240)°, and magenta
(300°), and the tertiary colors half way of every primary
and secondary hue value. In this way, a constant physical
difference in hue of 30° allowed us to obtain a total of 12
pure colors for the modifications of the interfaces.
Following the same principle, 3 nuances of grey were
also obtained, as shown by Fig. 3, with a constant physical
difference in value of 25%; hue and saturation remained
constant (to a value of 0). Black and White were also
included. In the end, this study created 17 versions for
each sports-wear site’s interface.
Figure 3: HSV System Components and Colors Selection
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International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.14 No.4
B. Arranging Kansei Words - Semantic Differential
Scale Questionnaire:
For the second study the same KW (study 1) were
utilized for the creation of bi-polar scales. Participants
also had to indicate how much they “liked” a color of an
interface on a 5-point SD scale, ranging from “not at all”
to “a lot”. No intermediate labels were used on any of the
scales.
3)  Participants:
For this study we had the participation of 29 Japanese
and 30 Mexican individuals; all of the participants were
currently living in their home countries. The participants
were young people with an age range of 20-30 years.
• Japanese population sample consisted of 18 men
and 11 women, with a mean average of 23.59 years.
The participants had a variety of backgrounds (e.g.
university students, professionals, etc.); most of them
(79.31%) reported casual online shopping habits (mean
1.17 times/month); and none of them had an abroad
experience that lasted more than 3 months.
• Mexican population sample consisted of 15 men
and 17 women, with a mean average of 23.06 years.
The participants had a variety of backgrounds (e.g.
university students, professionals, etc.); few of them
(6.25%) reported online shopping habits (mean 0.06
times/month); and none of them had an abroad
experience that lasted more than 3 months.
None of the participants reported to be color-blind.
4)  Study 2 Procedure:
Participants were provided with the address of the
experimental site and were asked to access. When entering
on the first section of the site they had to read the disclosure
and instructions. After which, they were asked to register
into the experimental data base (DB); answer to two “yes
or no” supplementary questions inquiring online shopping
habits and abroad living experience, and if they answered
positively to any of these questions, they had to answer
related sub questions describing shopping habits (times
per month), and time spent abroad (months).
The following two sections of the survey had the same
procedure. First, the 17 modified interface images of the
males site (Columbia) were shown one by one in a random
order to the participants in the left side of the screen; while
on the right side the SD scales for assessing color like-
ness, emotional arousal and aesthetic appeal were
displayed. For each interface participants had to indicate
their feelings before been able to change to the next inter-
face image. After evaluating the males clothing site
interfaces, participants were allowed to start evaluating
the 17 interfaces of the females clothing site (Fila).
International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.14 No.4

Finally, participants were directed to the acknowledge-
ments page of the experimental survey, signaling the end of
the experiment and terminating the connection to the DB.
5)  Study 2 Results:
For every case an Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering
(AHC) analysis, using Euclidean distance with Ward’s
agglomeration method, was run to identify subgroups of
colors that male and female participants of both popula-
tions preferred in each particular case (Columbia males
e-store & Fila females e-store). In order to analyze clusters
for color subgroups, dendrogram graphs were created
for each case. This helped in the identification of color
clusters that share perceived similarities for male and
female participants from both countries (Fig. 4 and Fig. 5
show the dendrograms analyzed for subgroup colors in
the Japan Domain, Males-Site case).
After which, for every case, the precise color values
(HSV) were determined with regard to the representatives
found in the central position within the clusters and
the degree of dissimilarity of each color. After making
comparisons between the cases’ responses from both
populations, we determined the preferred color similarities
for the males e-store case (Table 3): orange (30-100-100),
cyan (180-100-100), blue (240-100-100), blue-magenta
(270-100-100), and the achromatic light grey (00-00-75),
neutral grey (00-00-50).
The color preference similarities for the females’ e-store
case were (Table 4): orange, cyan, blue-cyan (210-100-
100), red-magenta (330-00-00) and the achromatic white
(00-00-100).

Figure 4:  Japan Domain, Males-Site -- AHC for Color Subgroup Identification of Males Responses

Figure 5:  Japan Domain, Males-Site -- AHC for Color Subgroup Identification of Females Responses

322
 International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.14 No.4

Kansei Concepts for eCommerce Website Design in a Bicultural Environment

Table 3:  Columbia Males-site, AHC Preferred Representative Table 4:  Fila Females-site, AHC Preferred Representative
Colors analysis Colors Analysis

Japan Domain Mexican Domain Japan Domain Mexican Domain

Males’ Females’ Males’ Females’ Males’ Females’ Males’ Females’
Colors (HSV) Responses Colors (HSV) Responses
Responses Responses Responses Responses Responses Responses
Red Orange
　　　　 (00-100-100)
 　　　　 (30-100-100)
 
Orange Cyan
　　　　 (30-100-100)
   　　　　 (180-100-100)
 
Cyan Blue Cyan
　　　　 (180-100-100)
  　　　　 (210-100-100)
 
Blue Blue Magenta
　　　　 (240-100-100)
  　　　　 (270-100-100)

Blue Magenta Red Magenta
　　　　 (270-100-100)
  　　　　 (330-100-100)
  
Red Magenta White
　　　　 (330-100-100)

(00-00-100)
  
Light Grey Light Grey
　　　　 (00-00-75)
  　　　　 (00-00-75)
 
Neutral Grey Dark Grey
　　　　 (00-00-50)
  　　　　 (00-00-25)


* , representative of an identified discernible color cluster * , representative of an identified discernible color cluster

Following, a PCA was then run in order to identify the
influential Kansei factors for the EA and AA factors for all
the cases for males and females responses. The square
cosine scores allowed us to identify that the Japanese
population looked for interfaces with colors that convey
the emotional factors of happiness, cheerfulness, pleasant
and excitement; and for the aesthetic novel characteristics
of consistency, harmony, inspiration, dynamicity and
modernity. While inconsistencies on the Mexican affective
evaluations made difficult to identify their EA and AA
evaluating factors, however we were able to conclude from
the collected data that gender on interfaces affects the
judgment of e-stores interfaces.
The PC scores of every color were then utilized to
create two- dimensional maps (Fig. 6), with the identified
Kansei factors as axes, in order to visually assess the
affective responses to colors on sports-wear sites and find
colors with high affective values. The PC scores, with
respect to the Kansei factors, allowed us as well to create
tables that gave individual Kansei interpretations to the
evaluated colors for each case; we named these tables
“Color Pick Tables” for Fads (preferred colors) and High

Figure 6: Japan Domain, Males-Site -- PCA Color Observations for AA Kansei Factors

323
International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.14 No.4
Table 5:  Japan Domain, Males-site – Color Pick Table (High Affective Values)
Affective colors (Table 5). We were able to determine the
High Kansei colors for the males’ e- store case; however,
inconsistencies in the Mexican responses ultimately lead
to the identification of High Kansei colors for the females’
e-store case just for the Japanese population.
5)  Study 2 Discussions:
This second study provided fresh insight into the impact
of color on website users or visitors in relationship to the
emotional and affective quality for two very distinct
cultures. Although the content of the different versions of
the experimental site was strictly identical, we obtained
interesting results according to site color preferences,
emotional and aesthetic evaluations. Results showed
a large number on shared color preferences for both
populations when evaluating the males and females
website interfaces; this might imply that, if true, color fads
are not bound to culture or geographical location. This
study was also able to interpret and identify the Kansei
factors when assessing affective states for interfaces
proper of the Japanese population; however inconsisten-
cies on the Mexican responses raise the question of “why”.
This research believes that the answer might be found on
one of the supplementary questions: online shopping
habits. From Mexican participants we reported that only
a 5% of them engage in online shopping activities (mean
0.06 times/ month), thus we assume that the Mexican
population lacks this culture. If a low percent of the
Mexican population engages in these activities, it is
reasonable to think that people would not care or would
not be able to assess their own judgment on the character-
istics that e-stores should possess.
324
5. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS
The limitations presented on this research might come
from the focus given on young consumers (aged 15-30
years old), sports-wear brands’ principal target group.
Another limitation can be found on the domain of the
interfaces used the experiments: sportswear e-stores.
Different domains might produce different results, for
instance an e-learning site results might differ from out
domain results. The online shopping trends of a country
also seemed to play an important role in the findings of
this research.
6. CONCLUSIONS
From a theoretical perspective, some of our results
confirm that the emotions associated with the feelings of
‘‘beauty’’ and “aesthetic” play an important role on
website design nowadays. From a practical perspective,
our work allowed us to identify colors that were regarded
as appealing or, on the contrary, rejected by two seem-
ingly different cultures, and implied for existing color
fads. We presented correlations to Kansei engineering
evaluative techniques by trying to translate consumer’s
emotion to the design elements, thus enabling e-retailers,
researchers, web designers and stakeholders to improve
their understanding on which design element elicits what
kind of affective responses to website users. Ultimately,
this research hopes that its findings aid in the design of
affective quality websites, resulting in the prosperity of a
given e-Commerce store.

Kansei Concepts for eCommerce Website Design in a Bicultural Environment
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Jose Manuel GARCIA MENDOZA 
Jose Manuel Garcia Mendoza (goes by Jose Garcia)
is orginal from the city of Torreon, Mexico.
Currently, Jose Garcia is an employee at the ITC-
Aerospace, Inc. involved in the business of
importing and exporting all types of aircrafts
worldwide with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan.
He obtained a B.Eng. in Digital Graphic Design from the University of
Monterrey (UdeM) located in Monterrey city, Mexico; and a B.Eng. in
Information Systems Management from the Nagaoka University of
Technology (NUT) located in Nagaoka city, Japan; both degrees during
the year 2013. As well, he obtained a MBA with concentration fields in
Finance and Project Management from the International University of
Japan (IUJ) located in Minamiuonuma city, Japan, during the year of
2015. Jose Garcia’s research interests are in: Entrepreneurship, Kansei
Engineering, Social Informatics, and Organizational Behavior.
Ashu MARASINGHE  (Member)
Chandrajith Ashuboda Marasinghe (goes by Ashu
Marasinghe) Sri Lankan, is an Associate Professor
in the Department of Management and Information
Systems Engineering, Nagaoka University of
Technology, Nagaoka, Japan and visiting Professor
at International University of Japan. He obtained
his B.Sc. degree in Physics and Mathematics from the University of
Colombo, Sri Lanka, M.Sc. in Computer Science & Engineering
from the University of Aizu, Japan and Ph.D. in Computer Science
& Engineering from the University of Aizu in 1997, 2001, and 2004
respectively. Prof Ashu’s research interests are: Public Health Infor-
matics, Artificial Life and Intelligence, Neuroscience, Neural Network,
Fuzzy System, Intelligent Control System, Multi Agent System,
Ubiquitous System, Social Informatics, and Kansei Engineering.