Manifestation of Culture in B2C Websites of Digitally Transformed Businesses in Emerging Asian Economies

ABSTRACT

Emerging Asian economies are undergoing significant economic expansion and cultural adaptation aided by globalization and the pervasive spread of ICT. This study empirically examines the depiction of cultural values in digitally transformed business websites from India, China, Malaysia, and Indonesia to determine if website culture is showing a shift from the national culture of the selected countries taken up in the study. We empirically examined 53 B2C websites, and the findings show that aside from the government-owned, organizations are demonstrating a marked shift from high context to low context cultural attributes. The study findings also indicate that organizations are increasingly leaning toward culture-neutral designs. Prior studies in this domain have focused on developed countries, and no comparable study exists on emerging economies. The findings of this research can shed light on the contemporary world views of the audiences from the selected country contexts, which in turn can enable firms to adopt appropriate engagement strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• B2C websites
• China, culture
• global
• Hofstede
• India
• Indonesia
• Malaysia

Acknowledgement

This paper is an output of the Seed Money Project sponsored by the FORE School of Management, New Delhi. The financial support provided by the institute in completing this paper is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the FORE School of Management, New Delhi.

Notes on contributors

Sriparna Basu

Sriparna Basu ([email protected]) is the Dean (Research) and Professor of Communication at FORE School of Management, New Delhi, India. She has more than 23 years of teaching experience and has worked in policy projects relating to digital policy impact evaluation in rural India. An avid researcher, she has published in top tier journals such as, the Journal of Business Research and the International Journal of Information Management. She has also presented papers in 17 international and national conferences.

Shilpi Jain

Shilpi Jain ([email protected]) is the Professor and Area Chair in Information Systems at FORE School of Management, New Delhi, India. She has published and presented her research in diverse domains of technology disciplines, including information systems, digital inclusion, responsible AI, and marketing in several leading international journals and conferences.

Sumeet Kaur

Sumeet Kaur ([email protected]) is a Professor in the area of Quantitative Techniques and Decision Sciences and has over 19 years of research and teaching experience. She has published research papers in Scopus and ABDC journals. She is an editor and reviewers to many ABDC and Scopus journals.