Cultural patterns in consumer-oriented electronic commerce on the World Wide Web: A comparison between virtual stores of United States, Brazil and Mexico (Spanish text)

The development of the Internet as a trading tool has impacted the way of doing business of many organizations. Some researchers theorize that the Internet is a globalizing agent and that it exports a cosmopolitan culture, producing a homogenizing cultural force, while others argue that the Internet has no impact on the existing cultural differences among countries. Given such controversy, the increasing interest for the global electronic business and the obsolescence of national frontiers we must ask ourselves, how important is the culture of the target market in the planning and development of electronic business applications in the WWW?; This research analyzed the phenomena around the electronic business and the Internet to determine whether the websites are different depending on the culture in which they are set. The analysis of this study compared virtual stores from Mexico, Brazil and the United States, in terms of their features and content.; The results of the content analysis and the statistical analysis supported that there are differences among the virtual stores from the United States, Mexico and Brazil and that Hofstede's dimensions of individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance can explain these differences. Moreover, the results supported a new theoretical framework that establishes that national culture, particularly the dimensions of individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance, affects the purpose and value of a virtual store, allowing a particular store design to promote the desired purchase behavior on its consumers. The design of a virtual store must have purposes and values (Ho, 1997) that vary according to the culture for which it was designed. The considerations of the cultural dimensions of individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance will result in the expected purchase behavior from the consumer. Both the purchase behavior and the post-purchase behavior are influenced by culture. The post-purchase behavior will result on new values and behaviors that will eventually be incorporated in the culture of the society.