Foreign Culture Adaption in E-commerce: Challenges and Strategies

This essay delves into the complexities of foreign culture adaption within the e-commerce landscape. It highlights the ongoing debate between standardization and adaptation in international marketing, emphasizing the limited empirical research in the online domain. The paper underscores the rapid growth and adoption of e-commerce technology in developing nations and the necessity for businesses to adapt to diverse cultures to achieve greater success. The essay examines the impact of cultural barriers on consumer adoption, including consumer knowledge, technology awareness, and purchase decision-making. It draws on various studies to emphasize the need for e-commerce firms to achieve cultural congruency, develop culturally adapted websites, and consider foreign cultural variations beyond simple translations. The study also discusses the significance of offering adequate language options, culturally sensitive content, and interactive designs. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding and adapting to foreign cultures for e-commerce firms to achieve larger effectiveness in the global market. The author will conduct further research on the topic to identify how individual e-commerce national society varies and which culture can be adequate to e-commerce business.

Foreign culture adaption in e-commerce
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The standardization vs adaptation argumentation in international marketing is still continuing
yet in the online domain this argument is just rising and empirical research on this issue is yet
relatively limited. Also e-commerce technology companies are fast emerging firms these days
and are getting rapidly developed and adopted by most businesses in the developing nations,
however to get better gains these e-commerce firms needs to adopt to different cultures but
this adoption is not easy because of several barriers (Changchit, Garofolo and Gonzalez,
2009). Studies have presented that cultural barriers exert necessary role in speeding up or
slowing down the adoption procedure and many cultural elements affect the adoption such as
knowledge and background of consumers, consumer consciousness about technology of e-
commerce services and consumer encounters also affect purchase decision making (Smith, et
al. (2013). Findings recommend by Benbasat and Wang, (2005) states that cultural value
depiction is not very robust in relevant markets of e-commerce technology companies, thus
an evident level of cultural detachment occurs, so, it is recommended that to involve in better
way with customers, these e-commerce technology firms need to reach higher cultural
congruency and work harder on building culturally adapted websites. Other study by Gefen
and Heart, (2008) presents that though e-commerce technology firms are virtually
immediately available for anyone but to properly interact and involve with desired target
consumers, these firms need to undertake critical development towards foreign cultural
variations. The imitation of home office generated websites and simple translation of content
is not sufficient to discover market possibilities. For example one of the studies by
Sinkovics, Yamin and Hossinger, (2007) have presented that cultural value depiction between
German and Latin American e-commerce websites is relevantly different however there is
basic adaptation in Latin American markets which presented cultural alienation. Thus this
study revealed that it is necessary that e-commerce firms adhere to foreign audience and their
expectations as well as build culturally congruent designs and country specific websites.
According to another literature presented by Punhani and Batra, (2014) e-commerce designs
and websites for users in different regions are targeted mainly to appeal global clients as well
as from local regions, however most of these e-commerce technology sites provides link to
different national sites most of which use English as medium for writing and does not offer
information on languages other than English for customers from diverse nations. In an global
environment such e-commerce interfaces do not prove to be efficacious because of
solicitation of inadequate tools for carrying inputs because most of these content on web is
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displayed in background or text locations which may be proper to certain cultural groups but
is misinterpreted by foreign spectators (Luna, Peracchio and de Juan, 2002). Alongside this
offering adequate language for foreign cultural adaptation on e-commerce websites is
necessary not only for understanding but also to deliver information in a local nous (Okazaki,
2004). Another study presented by Lo (2005) presented an argument that supremacy of
transnational e-commerce firms have built intersecting patten of standardization in web
communication and content, however cultural sensitivity in thematic impression, interactivity
and content is evident and so adaptation to foreign culture is critical for success though being
difficult. According to Kidane and Sharma, (2016) to achieve larger effectiveness either all
foreign e-commerce technology firms should share similar culture or must adapt to each
other’s culture.
In this context much research is not yet done, so with help of my research topic “Foreign
culture adaption conundrums in an eCommerce Technology Company” significant
investigations will be presented as to how individual e-commerce national society varies and
which culture can be adequate to e-commerce business. To refine searches for this topic I will
recognize keywords and locate information from different literature or books, asses the
information and sources and take relevant notes to insure effective results. Also to search
research literature effectually I will develop research questions in my topic area and prepare
list of relevant database and keywords/phrases related to search. Moreover the methodologies
that can be used to answer related research questions in my area of topic includes surveys,
historical research approach, case studies and ethnography approach.
References
Benbasat, I., and Wang, W. (2005). Trust in and adoption of online recommendation
agents. Journal of the association for information systems, 6(3), 4. Available on:
https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1454&context=jais
Changchit, C., Garofolo, T., and Gonzalez, J. J. (2009). A Cultural Study of E-Commerce
Trust: Hispanic Versus Anglo. Journal of Information Science & Technology, 6(4). Available
on: https://web.a.ebscohost.com/
Gefen, D., and Heart, T. (2008). On the need to include national culture as a central issue in
e-commerce trust beliefs. Handbook of Research on Information Management and the
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Global Landscape, 185. Available on: https://www.igi-global.com/article/need-include-
national-culture-central/3643
Kidane, T. T., and Sharma, R. R. K. (2016). Influence of culture on E-commerce and vice
versa. In Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and
Operations Management (pp. 87-94). Available on:
http://ieomsociety.org/ieom_2016/pdfs/28.pdf
Lo., B.W.N. (2005). Cultural impact on the design of e-commerce websites: Part 1-Site
format and layout. University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 6(2), 182-188. Available on:
https://iacis.org/iis/2005/Lo_Gong.pdf
Luna, D., Peracchio, L. A., and de Juan, M. D. (2002). Cross-cultural and cognitive aspects of
web site navigation. Journal of the academy of marketing science, 30(4), 397-410. Available
on: doi/abs/10.1177/009207002236913
Okazaki, S. (2004). Do multinationals standardize or localize? The cross‐cultural
dimensionality of product‐based web sites. Internet Research. 14(1), 81-94 Available on:
doi/10.1108/10662240410516336/
Punhani, R., and Batra, S. (2014). Understanding cultural variations of e-commerce websites
in a global framework. Global Journal of Finance and Management, 6(3), 275-280.
Available on: https://www.ripublication.com/gjfm-spl/gjfmv6n3_14.pdf
Sinkovics, R. R., Yamin, M., and Hossinger, M. (2007). Cultural adaptation in cross border e-
commerce: A study of German companies. Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 8(4).
Available on: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4674
Smith, R., Deitz, G., Royne, M. B., Hansen, J. D., Grünhagen, M., and Witte, C. (2013).
Cross-cultural examination of online shopping behavior: A comparison of Norway, Germany,
and the United States. Journal of Business Research, 66(3), 328-335. Available on:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.08.013
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