Lin, Huiping

Loiacono, Eleanor

English

AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)

Association for Information SystemsAIS Electronic Library (AISeL)AMCIS 2003 Proceedings Americas Conference on Information Systems(AMCIS)December 2003Website Quality: A Cross-Cultural Comparison ofUnited States and China Business CustomersEleanor LoiaconoWorcester Polytechnic InstituteHuiping LinNortheastern UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2003This material is brought to you by the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) at AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). It has been acceptedfor inclusion in AMCIS 2003 Proceedings by an authorized administrator of AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). For more information, please contactelibrary@aisnet.org.Recommended CitationLoiacono, Eleanor and Lin, Huiping, "Website Quality: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of United States and China BusinessCustomers" (2003). AMCIS 2003 Proceedings. 143.http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2003/1431156 2003 — Ninth Americas Conference on Information SystemsWEBSITE QUALITY:  A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONOF UNITED STATES AND CHINA BUSINESSCUSTOMERSEleanor T. LoiaconoWorcester Polytechnic Instituteeloiacon@wpi.eduHuiping LinNortheastern Universitylinhp@coe.neu.eduAbstractWebsite quality has been given much attention as of late. In particular the factors that impact a consumer’sperception of website quality is of great interest. This paper takes a currently validated measure of business-to-consumer website quality (WebQual™) and applies it to the Chinese Web users in order to study the cross-cultural differences and similarities of US and Chinese customers.Keywords:  Website quality, cross-culture, US, ChinaIntroductionThe Web is a critical channel to reach customers. Measuring website quality is becoming more and more critical as organizationsattempt to increase their website’s influence on consumers’ behavior (purchasing).  However, the cultural differences arehypothesized to affect the evaluation of website quality by consumers. This study intends to study the cultural influence on USand Chinese customers with regard to their perception of website quality. Cultural research has received more attentions since cultural localization became a necessary adjunct to technology transfer andglobal business communication (Gould, 2000). Marchewka (1996) studied the cultural and political influences of IT diffusionin China. However, little literature is available on cross-cultural comparison of US and Chinese customers especially in the areaof e-commerce.BackgroundCultureCultural research has identified five national culture dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, and long-term orientation (Hofstede 1980). According to Hofstede Americans and Chinesediffer in power distance (being the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations with a countryexpect and accept that power is distributed unequally), uncertainty avoidance (being the extent to which the members of a culturefeel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations), individualism-collectivism (being the extent to which the members of aculture act as individuals or as members of cohesive groups), and time orientation (the extent to which a society is focused onlong-term versus short-term goals). US citizens are considered to have a greater degree of autonomy between subordinates andbosses (US Power Distance Index scored 40 while Hong Kong scored 68 on Hofstede scale), be more individualistic (USIndividualism Index scored 91 and Hong Kong scored 25 on Hofstede scale), be more uncertainty-avoiding (US UncertaintyAvoiding Index scored 46 and Hong Kong scored 29 on Hofstede scale), and shorter-term in focus (US Long-term Index scored29 and Hong Kong scored 118 on Hofstede scale) than the Chinese.  As far as masculinity-femininity (masculinity pertaining tosocieties in which social gender roles are clearly distinct and femininity pertaining to societies in which social gender rolesLoiacono & Lin/Website Quality2003 — Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systems 1157overlap) is concerned, the countries do not have great difference (US Masculinity Index scored 62 and Hong Kong scored 57 onHofstede scale). WebQual™ (Loiacono 2000), a validated website quality measures shown to predict intention (to purchase), was employed inthe study to better understand the differences and similarities between US and Chinese consumers. The initial study is based ona survey that samples US and Chinese customers of 12 US commercial websites and 12 Chinese commercial websites that canbe grouped as online shopping, online hotel booking and online air tickets purchasing. A second round of data collection iscurrently underway to collect the 12 dimensions of website quality as well as cultural dimensions. The findings will assist inlaunching website(s) that appropriately address cultural differences.Website QualityWebQual™ is a comprehensive website quality measure designed to capture those aspects of a website that influence a users’intention to revisit. It identifies 12 dimensions of website quality: informational fit to task, interaction, trust, response time, designappeal, intuitiveness, visual appeal, innovativeness, flow – emotional appeal, integrated communication, business processes, andsubstitutability (Table 1). Each dimension of WebQual™ is represented by three statements, which subjects responded to usinga 7-point Likert scale (1 being strongly agreed to 7 being strongly disagreed). In our paper, WebQual™ was used to study thecultural influence on US and Chinese website customers.Table 1.  Initial WebQual™ DimensionsInitial Higher Level Category Dimension Description Ease of Use Ease of Understanding Easy to read and understand.Intuitive Operation Easy to operate and navigate.Usefulness Informational Fit-to-task The information provided meets task needs and improvesperformance.Tailored Communication Tailored communication between consumers and thefirm.Trust Secure communication and observance of informationprivacy.Response Time Time to get a response after a request or an interactionwith a site.Entertainment Visual Appeal The aesthetics of a website.Innovativeness The creativity and uniqueness of site design.Emotional Appeal The emotional effect of using the website and intensity ofinvolvementComplementary Relationship On-Line Completeness Allowing all or most necessary transactions to becompleted on-line (e.g., purchasing over the website)Relative Advantage Equivalent or better than other means of interacting withthe company.Consistent Image The website image is compatible with the imageprojected by the firm through other mediaResearch Approach and DesignA sample of 98 Chinese and 254 US consumers evaluated a variety of websites (Table 2), including product and service sites.In order to make sure the websites have equal functionality, twelve Chinese site and twelve English web sites  were selected,where each group contains six online shopping web sites, three hotel booking web sites and three air ticket purchasing web sites.Each subject visited a website and then evaluated it using WebQual™. In order to ensure there was no problem with the dataIT Adoption in China1158 2003 — Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systemscollection due to misinterpretation of the survey, WebQual™ was translated into Chinese and then back-translated by nativeChinese speakers. We hypothesize that WebQual™ will hold true for both cultures, but that culture will influence some factors.Table 2.  Subject DemographicsUS ChinaNumber of subjects 254 98Average age 19.9 22.6Gender Male = 50.0%Female = 49.6%Male = 74.8%Female = 25.2%Ever made purchaseover the WebYes = 71.7%No = 28.3%Yes = 57.7%No = 42.3%Preliminary FindingsThough this research is still in progress, the preliminary findings are presented here. Average scores for each dimension and anaverage overall score for the website (being the sum of the average dimension scores) were calculated. Based on these currentlyavailable data two-tailed, two-sample t-Tests were conducted for each dimension and the overall score to determine differencesin the average scores of Chinese and US customers. The average scores and test results are shown in Table 3.Overall, the WebQual™ scores for US and Chinese customers were not significantly different (p-value = .10). Both groups appearto evaluate sites similarly, regardless of culture. Looking at specific WebQual™ factors, culture was found to influences severaldimensions. US subjects evaluated the interaction, response time, design appeal, intuitiveness, business processes, andsubstitutability significantly higher than did Chinese subjects. The higher score on design appeal and intuitiveness may beattributed to the US’s higher degree of uncertainty avoidance. Those living in cultures with high uncertainty avoidance would havehigher job stress, more written rules, and more activities that are more structured. A more structured design that allows intuitivemovement throughout the site would be valued by US customers who desire greater structure and less uncertainty. The differencein the means between tailored communications, response time, business processes, and substitution are more likely affected bythe group’s time-orientation. US customers who are considered short-term oriented may want to have quick interactions with asite that also allow them to interact (search) for what they want immediately upon entering the site. Similarly, US customers arelikely to expect the option of online purchases right from the website. On-the-other-hand, Chinese customers are more patientin their approach and would be less demanding. This again may be due to China’s Confucianism background which teaches thevirtue of being patient and persevering.Chinese subjects assessed trust more highly than US subjects. This is not surprising since Chinese customers have lowerindividualistic tendencies and would be more likely to trust company sites as compared to US customers. US customers, beingmore individualistic, would be more concerned with keeping information private. Not all the relationships were found to be significant. Chinese customers scored visual appeal, emotional appeal, and integratedcommunications slightly higher than US customers, but not significantly. Similarly, US customers rated innovative higher thantheir Chinese counterparts. These findings are tentative, however, and further testing is required.Loiacono & Lin/Website Quality2003 — Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systems 1159Table 3.  Twelve Dimensions of Website Quality (Loiacono, et al. 2000) and Preliminary ResultsDimension Description of ConceptAverageScore of USSubjectsAverageScore ofChineseSubjectst-TestProbability1 Informational Fit toTaskRelates to the ability of the website tomeet the consumer’s informational needs.5.21 5.08 0.332 Interaction Relates to the ability of consumers tointeract with the website to receivetailored/personalized information orservice.5.28 4.92 0.00*3 Trust Relates to the concern for security andinformation privacy.4.67 5.09 0.01*4 Response Time Relates to the time that it takes consumerto download and interact with website.5.33 4.86 0.00*5 Design Appeal Relates to the aesthetic “beauty” of awebsite as well as the navigationalsystem.5.66 5.27 0.00*6 Intuitiveness Relates to the ease of using/interactingthe website.5.79 5.52 0.04*7 Visual Appeal Relates to the website’s visual appeal. 4.56 4.58 0.898 Innovativeness Relates to the website’s uniqueness andcreative feel.4.75 4.59 0.249 Flow-EmotionalAppealRelates to the emotional affect thewebsite has on consumers.4.62 4.73 0.3610 IntegratedCommunicationRelates to the relationship the websitehas with respect to other forms of media(radio, television, etc.).4.79 4.94 0.2211 Business Processes Relates to the relationship the websitehas with respect to the company’sbusiness processes (e.g., purchasing overthe website).5.59 5.18 0.00*12 Substitutability Relates to the use of the website as analternative means of interacting with thecompany.5.62 5.21 0.00*Overall Score 185.61 (5.16) 179.89 (5.00) 0.10* statistically significant at the .05 levelImplicationsThis research (in progress) has identified many similarities in the perception website quality by US and Chinese business-to-consumer customers. Especially with regard to the WebQual™ dimension, visual appeal, both subject groups’ perceptions of thewebsite were nearly identical. Also the dimensions informational fit-to-task, innovativeness, emotional appeal, and integratedcommunication had t-test probabilities higher than 0.20. This implies that multinational companies designing sites for bothcustomer groups can address these dimensions in a similar fashion. Different approaches might be appropriate with regard to theseven dimensions, in which US and Chinese customers differed significantly in their evaluations: interaction, trust, response time,design appeal, intuitiveness, business processes, and substitutability. Overall, Chinese consumers tended to rate these factorslower than their US counterparts. US citizens, however, were less trusting than the Chinese. One possible reason for this difference is the higher uncertaintyavoidance on the part of US citizens and the higher-levels of collectivism within the Chinese culture (Hofstede, 1980). It is lessIT Adoption in China1160 2003 — Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systemsaccepting to be suspicious and mistrustful of people in the Chinese culture than in the US. For Americans high-levels ofuncertainty avoidance and short-term orientation cause a demand for functions, such as interactive tools and intuitive navigationschemes which increase their ability to complete transactions online thereby avoiding uncertainty and decreasing the wait time.The findings thus far suggest that companies would be wise to modify their websites to take into account national culture. Whendesigning websites for different nationalities some aspects, such as interaction, trust, and intuitiveness will need to be handleddifferently. On the other hand, others may be addressed similarly, such as informational fit-to-task and visual appeal. Limitations and Future ResearchThere are two major limitations to this research. The first is the current lack of cultural dimension data. In order to conduct a truecross-cultural research individual nationality dimensions are required (McCoy, 2002). As mentioned earlier, this data will becollected in the next data collection using individual measures of culture (Dorfman and Howell, 1988). Secondly, the subjects used in the first round of data collection were students. Some would argue that using students as subjectslimits the generalizability of our findings to the general populace of web users. Though we would argue that students includedin our study match the general demographics of web consumers, we hope to do further testing on other Web consumer groups.Research by Voich (1995) further supports that students are sufficient surrogates for working professionals.ReferencesChurchill, G. (1991). Marketing Research – Methodological Foundations. Chicago, IL. The Dryden Press.Dorfman, P. W. and J. P. Howell (1988). “Dimensions of National Culture and Effective Leadership Patterns: HofstedeRevisited.” Advances in International Comparative Management, 3: 127-150.Gould, E.W., Zakaria, N. and Yusof, S. (2000).  “Applying Culture to Website Design: A Comparison of Malaysian and USWebsites,”  IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 161-171  Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Beverly Hills, CA. SagePublications.Loiacono, E., Watson, R., and Goodhue, D. (2002) “WebQual™: A Web Site Quality Instrument.” American MarketingAssociation: Winter Marketing Educators’ Conference, Austin, Texas: 432-438.Marchewka, J. and Wu, Q. (1996).  “Cultural and Political Influences on IT Diffusion in the People’s Republic of China.”Proceedings-Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute,  622-624McCoy, S. (2002). The Effects of National Culture Dimensions on the Acceptance of Information Technology: A Trait BasedApproach, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Pittsburgh.Seybold, P. (1998). Customers.com. New York:  Times Books.Voich, D. (1995). Comparative Empirical Analysis of Cultural Values and Perceptions of Political Economy Issues. Westport,CT:  Praeger.

Website Quality: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of United States and China Business Customers

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Website Quality: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of United States and China Business Customers

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