From “ancient” to “modern”: a cross‐cultural investigation of electronic commerce adoption in Greece and the United States

Abstract

Globalization and the ubiquitous nature of the Internet facilitate e‐commerce activities across nations. An empirical study was conducted using data from Greek and US consumers in order to obtain a better understanding of cross‐cultural e‐commerce adoption. The results give support for the proposed hypotheses, emphasizing the moderating role of cultural differences on consumer e‐commerce adoption. The unique contributions of this paper are three fold. First, we introduce Hofstede's cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance to the study of cross‐cultural e‐commerce adoption model. Second, we apply the theory of planned behavior perspective to capture behavioral intentions to transact online in two dissimilar countries – Greece and the US. Finally, the paper discusses several insights from this exploratory study that enrich the cross‐cultural e‐commerce literature.