Abstract
As an economic bloc, the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) aims to leverage the usage of e-commerce for the benefits of all: government, enterprises, and citizens of its member countries. However, each country varies greatly in terms of economic development and cultural factors, which explains the uneven level of e-commerce adoption in the region. This paper seeks to provide empirical evidence by integrating individual and country-level characteristics to profile e-commerce users in ASEAN. By analyzing multi-source data from 5870 individuals in six countries in 2017, the results reveal that e-commerce adoption is more prevalent among female, younger, more educated, employed, and higher income users. Also, the adoption of e-commerce is found to be stronger in societies that exhibit high individualism, low masculinity and low uncertainty avoidance. This study proposes that e-commerce adoption shall not only be explained by individual characteristics and formal institutions, but also by country-level variables and national culture.
Highlights
The ability to conduct business transactions via computer networks has existed since the 1960s, yet the emergence of two companies, Amazon and eBay, in 1995 has enormously transformed the way today’s businesses operate
Before running the model, we took adequate measures to ensure the absence of common method bias, multicollinearity using variance inflation factors, and outliers
As an economic bloc, can Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) ensure that strategic plans for promoting e-commerce platforms in the ASEAN economic community (AEC) Blueprint 2025 are beneficial to all country members? Do demographic characteristics interact with national culture to influence the eventual online shopping behavior of customers? We attempt to answer these issues by arguing that e-commerce adoption is explained by the integration of both levels of factors: individual
Summary
The ability to conduct business transactions via computer networks has existed since the 1960s, yet the emergence of two companies, Amazon and eBay, in 1995 has enormously transformed the way today’s businesses operate. E-commerce refers to the process of selling and purchasing goods and/or services through computer networks following the methods designed for placing and acquiring orders, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [43]. Despite the fact that e-commerce is conceivably advantageous for all (governments, businesses, and customers) the prevalence of e-commerce adoption is greatly heterogeneous between nations [40]. This phenomenon demands extensive research to explore the individual and country-level factors contributing the adoption of e-commerce to ensure that the benefits offered can be fully embraced by all economies
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