Title: The cross-national comparison of website feature preferences: a practical approach

Authors: Brian F. Blake, Cristina Shamatta, Kimberly A. Neuendorf, Rhiannon L. Hamilton

Addresses: Department of Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2300 Chester Ave., Cleveland, OH, 44115, USA. ' Timken Corporation, 1100 Cherry Ave., Mail drop IGH-09, Canton, OH, 44706, USA. ' School of Communication, Cleveland State University, 2001 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH, 44115, USA. ' Ipsos-ASI, 250 East Fifth Street, Suite 1400, Cincinnati, OH, 45202, USA

Abstract: Tailoring consumer shopping sites to fit diverse national markets requires a grasp of the similarities and differences among those national markets in preferred site features. The past literature indicates five issues that can cloud attempts to gauge the national differences in the preferability of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) site features. This paper proposes the |Preference Component Perspective|, a conceptual-methodological approach to overcome these challenges and more meaningfully assess these national differences. The framework identifies two independent components of site feature preferences (elevation and priority) and provides a means to distinguish the societal-level and individual-level effects. A survey of online shoppers in the USA, the People|s Republic of China and Poland demonstrated the approach|s ease of application and the validity of its core assumptions in the data sample. It was shown that the approach can yield insights that are valuable to practitioners who devise effective B2C websites for international markets and to marketing/behavioural/information scientists who develop theoretical models of online shopping adoption.

Keywords: online shopping; website feature preferences; global marketing; cross-cultural comparisons; website localisation; internet marketing; internet advertising; China; Poland; USA; United States; web features; culture; e-shopping; consumer preferences; B2C websites; internet shopping.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2009.026368

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 2009 Vol.5 No.3, pp.145 - 165

Published online: 08 Jun 2009 *

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