It can pay to customise your website to the culture you target: A comparison of Korean and US e-commerce consumers

Research by Dongwoo Ko, Yuri Seo and Sang-Uk Jung has investigated whether and when culturally customised websites are an effective way to influence consumers in their online purchasing decisions.** E-commerce activities often transcend borders by operating across multiple economies, reaching consumers from a range of cultures at an accelerated pace. The researchers consider the rapid emergence and growth of e-commerce in Asian countries, the region’s distinct culture and unique cultural dimensions, and Asia’s projected future growth within the global e-commerce landscape. Through conducting two empirical studies, focusing on the experience of consumers from two distinct cultural environments, Korea and the United States, Ko, Seo and Jung set out to identify cultural differences between websites of Korean and US travel agencies; and, secondly, to investigate the influence of culturally customised websites on willingness to pay (WTP) in these two markets. They draw on the theory of processing fluency (described as the extent of metacognitive ease or effort with which people process information). In this study, processing fluency was measured as the time (in minutes) it took participants to complete travel bookings online, across either culturally congruent or incongruent platforms.