Manifestation of Culture in B2C Websites of Digitally Transformed Businesses in Emerging Asian Economies

Abstract

ABSTRACT Emerging Asian economies are undergoing significant economic expansion and cultural adaptation aided by globalization and the pervasive spread of ICT. This study empirically examines the depiction of cultural values in digitally transformed business websites from India, China, Malaysia, and Indonesia to determine if website culture is showing a shift from the national culture of the selected countries taken up in the study. We empirically examined 53 B2C websites, and the findings show that aside from the government-owned, organizations are demonstrating a marked shift from high context to low context cultural attributes. The study findings also indicate that organizations are increasingly leaning toward culture-neutral designs. Prior studies in this domain have focused on developed countries, and no comparable study exists on emerging economies. The findings of this research can shed light on the contemporary world views of the audiences from the selected country contexts, which in turn can enable firms to adopt appropriate engagement strategies.