Culture and purpose of Web 2.0 service adoption: a study in the USA, Korea and Spain

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare the characteristics of Web 2.0 application adoption among three countries with different cultural backgrounds by collecting data from the USA, Korea, and Spain. The authors conducted multivariate analysis of covariance analysis by using country as an independent variable representing unique cultural background, information technology capability (ITC) as covariate, and two dependent variables for Web 2.0 services, including social networking tool (SNT) and task support tool (TST). The results of this study show that culture and ITC strongly influence the adoption of Web 2.0 services. The Korean group is using Web 2.0 services mainly for social networking, whereas the US group is using them more for conducting their tasks. The Spanish group showed a balanced and high level of usage for both SNT and TST. The results of this study suggest that global firms should consider unique behaviours of Web 2.0 users when they develop strategies leveraging Web 2.0 services.

Keywords:

• Web 2.0
• social networking
• culture
• task support tools
• collaboration
• intelligence