Xiaorui Hu

Cultural Adaptation on the Web: A Study of American Companies' Domestic and Chinese Websites

In the academic literature and the business press, there seems to be a lack of guidance and lack of cross-cultural models to support companies localization strategies on the Web. To address this deficit in literature and to provide marketers and Web designers with insights into website localization, this paper conducted a comparative analysis of the U.S. based international companies’ domestic websites and their Chinese websites. A framework to measure cultural adaptation on the Web is presented. Forty U.S.-based Fortune 500 companies are surveyed to investigate the cultural adaptation of their Chinese websites. Content analysis of the 80 U.S. domestic and Chinese websites reveals that the web is not a culturally neutral medium, but it is full of cultural markers that give country-specific websites a look and feel unique to the local culture.

Analyzing the cultural content of web sites

Purpose – To explore the depiction of cultural values on international web sites.Design/methodology/approach – To measure cultural content on the web Singh and Matsuos conceptual framework was used. Content analysis was used to study the cultural content on web sites from China, India, Japan and the US.Findings – The results indicate that local web sites of India, China, Japan and US not only reflect cultural values of the country of their origin, but also seem to differ significantly from each other on cultural dimensions.Research limitations/implications – This study validates the cultural value framework of Singh and Matsuo by successfully using it to analyze the cultural content on various country web sites. The study also provides evidence to international marketers and academics that instead of a “transnational web style” a culturally unique web style is emerging on the web.Practical implications – Marketers need to culturally customize their international web sites as the web is emerging as global...

The Effectiveness of the Escrow Model: An Experimental Framework for Dynamic Online Environments

This article investigates the mechanism of an online escrow service (OES) in online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auctions. We develop a discrete-event driven simulation model for the dynamics of an OES adoption in electronic markets that involves four types of agents: the strategic trader, the moral trader, the OES provider, and the law-enforcement agent. By applying the Monte Carlo method in computer-based simulations, we demonstrate that the OES business model can effectively block fraud attempts and promote security in online C2C auction markets. However, our findings reveal that the prevailing OES fee rates are not necessarily set at the profit maximization level. Meanwhile, the simulation results show that the legal mechanisms in electronic markets directly impact the profit of escrow services.