There is a growing need to acknowledge cultural and social factors of metaphors that define the national culture of the target market, rather than just making use of the “Western” theories. Studying the online shopping behaviors of customers is essential. There is a link between the different cultural backgrounds and the eCommerce interface design. Apparently, the interface designers should not just focus on the theoretical aesthetically related issues but look deep down the cultural perceptions of their target audience.1.1Rapid technology advancement 1.1.1 A ‘small world’ with a global marketplace makes it necessary to localize software products to sell to the target market internationally.
1.1.2 Lack of understanding of local customers ‘culture in the global online marketplace (Jagne et al. 1).1.1.3 Importance of addressing culture in interface design and commercial marketing.
Significance of culture in the use of metaphors and interface design
Shopping metaphor in eCommerce interface design
Conducting empirical ethnographic work and using multi-method empirical studies to locate cultural variances in eCommerce.
Assess how culture influence on consumers and how it affects their shopping behavior.
2.1 Interface Design, Metaphors and Commerce
2.1.1 Designing software and sites need to focus on native language, metaphors, colors and other semiotics.2.1.2 Doctrine behind metaphors is still in its infancy (Jagne et al. 2) and shopping metaphor used from one domain offer useful insight into a different domain.
2.1.3 Culture is a major facilitator in the process of commerce and can help continue the upward trend of e-commerce.2.1.4 Complex and contradictory encounters between local consumers and globalized consumption.
2.1.5 Constantly changing culture due to foreign influence and the internet is changing the existing, cultural theories.2.1.6 Local consumer cultures can be resistant to globalized consumption and can be detrimental to local economic interests.
2.1.6 Understanding of cultural practices is essential to get valuable insights into design3.1 Theoretical vs. Empirical Data3.1.1 Comparing two theoretical based versions of ‘culture’ with a third data driven culture’ for supermarket items online.3.1.2 First theory of rational choice based on user attitudes to technology and their likely online shopping habits (Jagne et al. 3)
3.1.3 Second theory takes an explicitly cross-cultural view associating shopping behavior with ‘lifestyles.’
3.1.4 The third option presents an alternate look at shopping behavior by making an observation
Product relevancies – where items are shopped for pleasure
Categorization problems – people carry up a certain amount of familiarity
Lifestyle relevancies – nutritional values, added additives and so on are major concerns for certain shoppers.
4.1 Doctrine behind the concept of eCommerce metaphor
4.1.1 Metaphors play a significant role in interface design and culture affects how people understand metaphors.
The study provides insight into the principle behind the concept of the shopping to eCommerce metaphor.
The results will benefit all eCommerce interface developers
4.1.2 Researchers, students, and lecturers of various national backgrounds completed the questionnaires.
4.1.3 Research on masses with similar demographics regarding age, financial status and social standing and educational level
4.1.4 Compare and contrast shopping experience in different countries for a length of time.
5.1 Culturally independent shopping behavior
5.1.1 All showed concern related to Data security and the security of their personal and financial information (Jagne et al. 4).5.1.2 Online images versus catalog images and color contrasts were the main reason clothes and shoes were bought from catalog but not online.
6.1 Culturally dependent shopping behavior
6.1.1 Certain factors were heavily influenced by the national and cultural background of the online shopper.
Gender specific division of labor - Men hate shopping for general household items and clothes but prefer looking for info on electronic items and cars etc.
Trust in co-operations - Westerners had a deep-rooted mistrust of large corporations whereas the other subjects had some faith in big conglomerates.
Attitude towards shopping - buyers from less economically developed countries found shopping to be an experience whereas Westerners look at it as another everyday activity
Family involvement - for the non-westerners, purchase decisions were family oriented while the Westerners were more independent of their shopping habits.
Perception of the norm in the country – how people look at the norm is largely based on their culture.
The Economic division between the poor and the rich - the production and availability of identical items with different degrees of quality and, therefore, various expenses.
Adaptation of goods - People from the developing world copy from a magazine for clothing items, but this is not done in the Western world.
6.1.2 The results derive to the conclusion as to how sites are designed on a generic and regional level,
Adding family oriented aspects to the interface of sites localized to non-Western countries as family decisions are of significant importance to non-Westerners
Scrapping the registration forms from all sites
Exclusion of conglomerate stamps from Western sites especially American sites
Conducting further research into color projection on all sites to provide accurate visual display
Results show the contrast between the shopping behaviors based on ethnicity.
7.1 Conclusion
7.1.1 Studies carried out show impact of new technologies
7.1.2 Users show resistance to products with, Western metaphors in favor of products localized according to their cultural customs and so on.
7.1.3 In the field of eCommerce, looking into the culture is significant because of the exponential growth of the Internet8.1 Future work on this research
The trend of electronic commerce and online shopping will depend upon the interface and how people interact with the computer.
Develop a cultural model specifically for locating the way how people behave in a shopping environment
Their culture and society most likely affect their shopping behavior.
It is imperative to study as many cultures as possible
Build up rich repositories to make it less expensive and time-consuming for designers, companies, and researchers to gather information about different cultures
The key contributions will help translate cultural attributes into interface design and design the right cultural model for shopping behavior.
Works Cited
Jagne, Jainaba, Smith, Serengul, Curzon, Paul Curzon and Duncker, Elke. "Cross-Cultural Factors of Physical-Shopping and eShopping." eecs.qmul.ac.uk 1.1 (2005): 1-7. Print.
