An exploratory cross-cultural study of online purchasing behavior: A comparison of American and Chinese college students

Unprecedented business opportunities have arisen after China's acceptance into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. The World Bank estimates China's share of world trade will increase to 9.8% by 2020, making it second only to the United States. China has ranked first in the total number of Internet users around the world since 2008, but the Internet penetration rate is still relatively low at the same time. All of these facts establish China as a huge and potential market for the global e-Commerce business. However, previous studies have indicated that the e-Commerce infrastructure in China is lagging far behind the developed countries such as the United States. With this prospect have come difficulties as overseas businesses attempt to interact with Chinese consumers who have possibly unique views and behaviors of online shopping.;The goal of this study was to examine Chinese college students' online purchasing behaviors in comparison to their counterparts in the United States. A structured 35-question online survey instrument was developed in both English and Chinese. The survey was administrated online to 154 Chinese and 128 U.S. college students. The overall internal reliability was 0.31 based on Cronbach's alpha coefficient. An ANOVA and correlation analysis was performed to explore the online shopping perception and experience difference between the two participant groups. The findings offer a deeper understanding of Chinese online consumers' shopping experience and purchasing behaviors in the entirely different e-Commerce development contexts. The study also supports overseas business organizations to identify e-Commerce infrastructure aspects that are functioning well or may need to be changed to the better position when targeting the Chinese online shopping population.