Summary
Brashear, Kashyap, Musante, and Donthu (2009) set out to investigate differences in attitudes, socio-demographics, and motivations among Internet shoppers in industrialized nations and fast-growing industrializing economies, with: the United States, the U.K., New Zealand on one hand, and Brazil, China, and Bulgaria on the other hand. In part, the authors were impelled by the “U.S.-centric” view of online marketing that dominates the literature. Secondly, the authors hypothesized that variations in Web infrastructure, culture, education, and income ought to induce differences in online shopping behavior. Thirdly, the team looked to expand the boundaries of comparative international studies which had up to now been rudimentary, e.g. focused on the risk avoidance that besets early adopters when they confront the need to divulge credit card and banking information online to “faceless” merchants who are often an ocean away. The rapid growth of online shopping overseas and the estimated value in dollar terms makes it clear, however, that the early fears have already been hurdled.
The authors employed mall intercept, face-to-face interviews in all six markets. The study instrument consisted chiefly of questions about traditional and online shopping, as well as scales that measured convenience, seeking variety, openness to innovation, risk aversion, being impulse shoppers, brand-consciousness, and interest in comparing prices.
In general, the authors found more similarities than differences across cultures. Without exception, respondents who bought online were more convenience-oriented than those who preferred to stay with traditional, “bricks and mortar” establishments. Secondly, Internet shoppers were more likely to be impulse buyers, a characteristic that logically springs from the need for convenience that online shopping satisfies. One who likes to indulge his whims is highly appreciative of a retail channel that is fast and easy to use.
Among the cultural differences noted:
- New Zealand proved the exception to the rule that novelty and impulse buying was a differentiating characteristic for Internet shoppers. This bears looking into since the population is comparatively tiny and more agricultural in outlook than those to be found in the key urban centers of the other five markets surveyed.
- For some reason, Internet shoppers in Bulgaria and China were no more risk-averse than their compatriots who preferred to buy only from “real” shops.
- Britons, New Zealanders, Chinese, and Brazilians who shopped on the Net were just as interested in variety as their countrymen who bought only from malls and “big box” stores.
Evaluation
It should not be surprising that cultural differences do not weigh heavily in the behavior of Net shoppers across the countries examined. After all, the epochal changes that marked IT and Web 2.0 technologies in just this decade have facilitated the adoption of Net shopping. One only has to bear in mind language accessibility becoming a thing of the past as both end-user software (e.g. Microsoft’s ubiquitous Office suite) and Web sites rapidly became multi-lingual.
Nonetheless, the present study offers important learnings for cross-cultural marketing even for the seemingly seamless global marketplace that is the Internet today. A multinational e-commerce company looking to gain more customers from New Zealand, for example, has to acknowledge that a product mix heavy on the latest in consumer electronics, “green” innovations, indoor recreation, and online games is unlikely to strike a responsive chord in a nation of shepherds and cattle raisers who like spending leisure time outdoors and still enjoy a relatively pristine environment.
Similarly, hard-sell direct response marketing that asks for a buying decision based on just a sales pitch may not be effective among Kiwis who eschew impulse buying and are therefore likely to seek out endorsements or favorable word of mouth. The laid-back and easygoing culture of an agricultural economy may explain this but the same could be said of Brazil, burdened in addition by the relaxed outlook handed down by its Iberian colonizers from centuries past.
References
Brashear, T. G., Kashyap, V. Musante, M. D. & Donthu, N. (2009). A profile of the internet shopper: Evidence from six countries. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 17 (3); pp. 267-281