Online Shopping Internet

CULTURE AND INTERNET SHOPPING ADOPTION PROPOSAL

ABSTRACT

The basic aim of this research paper would be to find the relationship between the contextual factors like unemployment rate, income etc. and cultural factor i.e. individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance, and do they effect the online shopping. We will gather the data about theses contextual variables from the online database sources and use the statistical tool like linear regression and correlation to find out the relationship and the effect of the factors on the online shopping adoption rate.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

The internet usage has increased in the previous years but the use of internet for online transactions has not increased at the same pace. Many factors contribute to this phenomenon including the contextual factors like income. Above all, the internet shopping adoption is affected by the cultural differences to a great extent. For the same reason, many countries with same GDP level have different internet shopping adoption.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The basic aim of this research is to find the relationship between the two culture dimensions i.e. individualism and collectivism and uncertainty avoidance and the internet shopping adoption rate by these countries along with the contextual factors like economic growth rate, crime rate, unemployment rate, income and education level. This research will test the following hypothesis:

• The countries that are not risk averse i.e. have low uncertainty avoidance level are more likely to shop online.

• The countries that have more individualistic approach go for online shopping more as compared to the countries with group oriented approach.

• Individualism and collectivism is of no relevance to online shopping for the countries that are high on the uncertainty avoidance levels.

• If uncertainty avoidance for countries is low than the individualistic countries will shop online more than the collectivist countries.

IMPORTANCE/BENEFITS of STUDY

The basic benefit of this study will be for those who run their businesses online. This study will help them to focus on those factors that can affect their business. This study will diverge their attention to the study of cultural difference also which were neglected before in the study of online businesses. This study will provide them an insight to the relation between different factors and their combine affect on the internet shopping adoption rate enabling them to design their business model accordingly.

This study will also propose different research questions for the future research.

RESEARCH DESIGN

We are going to research about the impact of the culture dimensions that are given by Hofstede on the internet shopping adoption rate by testing our hypothesis using the secondary data that we will gather from different websites. A linear regression model will be used for testing the hypothesis using this data. The correlation coefficient will also be used to show the relation between these contextual and cultural factors. The model will control the effects of the contextual factors (income, education level, unemployment rate, economic growth rate and crime rate) to better understand the effects of the two culture dimensions on the usage of internet for the purpose of shopping online.

The study will be conducted by dividing the model into four step hierarchical linear regression model. The independent variable would be added at each step to study the impact of each variable individually and collectively.

Step 1: First of al the contextual variable income would be tested alone.

Step 2: The rest of the four contextual variables will be added in the second step.

Step 3: At this level, the two cultural dimensions given by Hofstede i.e. individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance would be added in the model

Step 4: The combined effect of individualism-collectivism uncertainty avoidance will be studied in this step.

As our objective is to find out the relationship between the contextual and cultural factors therefore, the correlation model is most appropriate statistical tool to come up with the nature and degree of relation ship between these factors.

The linear regression model is appropriate to test the effect of these contextual and cultural factors on the internet shopping adoption rate.

DATA ANALYSIS

The results obtained by conducting the correlation test and the linear regression test will be presented using graphs and the tables. The graphs will show the relationship between the variable whereas, the tables would be used to present the research findings.

We have also assumed that we will use only those people as base for our study who have access to internet and those who use internet.

One of the limitations of our study is that we do not have data available for all the contextual factors of all the countries of the world. So we will restrict our study to 33 countries only for which we have the data available for both the contextual and the cultural factors. The data for the contextual factors would be gathered from the online databases. According to the published cross culture studies at the country level, the sample size of 33 is up to standard.

The unavailability of data from the countries of the regions like Latin America, Africa and Middle East is also a limitation for our research as this would lead to the under representation of these regions in our study.

NATURE AND FORM OF RESULTS

The findings and the conclusion of the research would be presented using the graphs and tables. The tables would show the numbers and the graph would show the pictorial representation of the relationship between the variables.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hofstede, G.H. (1980) Culture's Consequences, Sage: Beverly Hills, CA.

Hofstede, G.H., Van Deusen, C.A., Muller, C.B. and Charles, T.A. (2002) ?What goals do business leaders pursue? A study in fifteen countries?, journal of International Business Studies 33(4): 785-803.

http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~jrw/200/revised.paper.schedule.pdf

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