Chinese Culture and Internet E-Commerce

The potential for the Internet and e-commerce in China and Chinese-speaking nations (including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore) is huge. Many experts believe that China will have the second largest population of web surfers, after the United States, by the year 2005 (McCarthy, 2000). Currently, the Internet population in China is doubling every six months (CNNIC, 2001). There are many issues relating to China’s cultural aspects and society, which can impact the design and content of web sites that are directed towards Chinese audiences. Some of these issues include basic differences between Chinese and American/Western cultures, family and collective orientations, religion and faith, color, symbolism, ordering and risk/uncertainty. Attention is given to the differences between the cultures of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, as well as addressing issues brought up by related theories and frameworks. A discussion of important considerations that relate to using Chinese language on the World Wide Web (WWW) is also included. Finally, insights are gained by examining web sites produced in China and Chinese-speaking countries. This chapter will focus on many of these issues and provide practical guidelines and advice for those who want to reach out to Chinese audiences, whether for e-commerce, education, or other needs.

The E-Commerce of SMEs in Thailand

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand are fundamental business units spread all over the country. Since the severe economic crisis (i.e., Tom Yum Kung disease) in 1997, thousands of SMEs have gone bankrupt and so dropped out of the Thai economy each year. One key means of enhancing the viability of SMEs and assisting in economic recovery of the country that has been suggested is to transform them from a traditional to digital business using the Internet and e-commerce.. The expected advantages of e-commerce strategy include decreasing costs, expanding marketplaces, enhancing competitiveness, improving business image, and increasing revenues. However, there are snares and hidden pitfalls in the backend of this business. This chapter presents an overview of e-commerce of SMEs in Thailand. The first part introduces fundamental background of SMEs in Thailand including types and characteristics. The second part investigates advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce implementation. Finally, the third part discusses SMEs and e-commerce in Thailand in the case of e-tourism.

Trust in B2C E-Commerce

This chapter aims to report what issues of trust apply to the Mäori Internet shopper. Mäori arrived in New Zealand from the Pacific about a thousand years ago, and have since become a minority in New Zealand (Belich, 1996). Although it is difficult in defining an ethnic group, the definition of Mäori includes “all those who identify themselves as belonging to the New Zealand Mäori ethnic group, either alone or in combination with any other ethnic group” (Statistics New Zealand, 1998, p. 94). Their culture, language and values have become secondary to those of the dominant European culture (Liu, Wilson, McClure & Higgins, 1999). This chapter will also help the reader to understand trust and Internet shopping from a Maori New Zealander’s perspective. As a result, this chapter will reveal the key trust issues for Mäori that either hinder or assist them to purchase via the Internet.

Stakeholder Relationships and Electronic Commerce

E-commerce is often associated with the buying and selling of consumer products over the Internet. While this narrow definition of e-commerce is correct, many other commerce and business activities also fall under the term “e-commerce”. The stakeholders who create commerce, either actively or passively construct and determine the nature of the commercial relationship. The aim of this chapter is to suggest the e-commerce Differentiation Framework, which uses the nature and activities of stakeholders to distinguish between the two major types of e-commerce, namely Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce. This framework will use examples of e-commerce in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore and Australia. The study was carried out in these two countries over a period of four months in 1999.

The Adoption of Information Technology

Agriculture is important to the Thai economy, contributing about 17 percent to the Thai GNP. It accounts for about 34 percent of all exports (Mahidol University, 1998). Important activities include crop cultivation, rearing of livestock, fishery, and forestry. In 1991, about 62 percent of the Thai population, approximately 36 million people, was involved in agriculture (Office of Agriculture Economics, Ministry of Thai Agriculture and Cooperatives, 1992, p. 29). Thai agricultural cooperatives play an important role and a study of them provides a window into Thai agriculture. For some Thai farmers, co-operatives provide access to information from the outside world; for others, they provide information about Thai agriculture. Particular cooperatives provide marketing information on agricultural produce that should improve the income of Thailand’s farmers. In addition, Thai agricultural co-operatives can use e-commerce to improve their trading. A report in The Nation newspaper in 1998 (1998a) supported this view, saying that market information such as product prices, could assist farm planning and protect farmers from merchants’ unfair trading practices. Merchants could also use such information to improve business planning and to evaluate investments. It is further suggested that the Thai government could use information technology to better support the Thai farming community; that information technology could be used by agricultural cooperatives as a tool for communication with farmers; and that the government could be better informed of farmers’ needs, and so provide better and more useful services. In a similar vein, Sirimance (1998) suggests that information technology could reduce the communication gap between rural communities and the cities [The Nation newspaper (1998b)]. Despite the apparent advantages, Thai agriculture, including agricultural cooperatives, have been slow to introduce and exploit e-commerce; this is basis of our research project as described in Chiecochan and Lindley (1999), Chieochan, Lindley and Dunn (2000a & 2000b). In these papers, diffusion and adoption theory was used to classify Thai agricultural cooperatives according to if and when they adopted e-commerce. The main conclusion is that Thai agricultural cooperatives are slow in adopting e-commerce. Chieochan, Lindley and Dunn (2000) show that only 60 percent of Thai agricultural cooperatives use information technology and only 5 percent access the Internet. The Internet in Thailand is used mainly as a communication tool and websites for publishing organizational information , but is rarely used to conduct commercial transactions (King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology, Thonburi, 2001). Therefore, understanding factors affecting the use of information technology in Thai agricultural cooperatives is the fundamental to understand the use of e-commerce in Thai agricultural cooperatives and Thai culture. Al-Qirim and Corbitt (2001) support that factors inhibiting and encouraging e-commerce adoption are similar to factors inhibiting and encouraging information technology adoption in Thai agricultural cooperatives. Five keys factors affecting the use of information technology in Thai agricultural cooperatives need to be examined: • Thai agricultural cooperatives • Information Technology and e-commerce • National factors affecting the use of information technology and e-commerce in Thai agricultural cooperatives • Organizational factors affecting the use of information technology and e-commerce in Thai agricultural cooperatives • Implications to Thai government and Thai agricultural cooperatives

Globalization, Culture and E-Business

This chapter is concerned with the way globalization, culture and e-business are interacting in the world economic environment to produce globalized trade and expansion of e-business not only across nations, but between organizations and across organizations internationally. This chapter is also concerned with the nature of globalization and gaining an understanding of what globalization means in various cultures. It will produce an understanding of why globalization is important in understanding e-business, how it impacts on e-business and how it has supported and promoted the changing nature of trade across the world. This chapter will also address why understanding culture is important in the e-business realm. Electronic business cannot be isolated from the cultures in that it works. While there is a tendency towards a world view, or globalized view, of the nature of e-business, the managerial factors and human interaction within e-business are imbued with cultural practices that challenge any sense of uniformity or heterogeneity. We will also be concerned with how e-business development is related to the expansion of globalization thinking and of the way that we are changing our worldview as a whole.

Analysis of Cultural Conflict in the Development of Web-Enabled Information Systems

The advent of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the emergence of Internet commerce have given rise to the web as a medium of information exchange. In recent years, the phenomenon has affected the realm of transaction processing systems, as organizations are moving from designing web pages for marketing purposes, to web-based applications that support business-to-business (WEB) and business-to-consumer (B2C) interactions, integrated with databases and other back-end systems (Isakowitz, Bieber et al., 1998). Furthermore, web-enabled applications are increasingly being used to facilitate transactions even between various business units within a single enterprise. Examples of some of the more popular web-enabled applications in use today include airline reservation systems, internet banking, student enrollment systems in universities, and Human Resource (HR) and payroll systems. The prime motive behind the adoption of web-enabled applications are productivity gains due to reduced processing time, decrease in the usage of paper-based documentation and conventional modes of communication (such as letters, fax, or telephone), and improved quality of services to clients. Indeed, web-based solutions are commonly referred to as customer-centric (Li, 2000), which means that they provide user interfaces that do not necessitate high level of computer proficiency. Thus, organizations implement such systems to streamline routine transactions and gain strategic benefits in the process (Nambisan & Wang, 1999), though the latter are to be expected in the long-term. Notwithstanding the benefits of web technology adoption, the web has ample share of challenges for initiators and developers. Many of these challenges are associated with the unique nature of web-enabled applications. Research in the area of web-enabled information systems has revealed several differences with traditional applications. These differences exist with regards to system development methodology, stakeholder involvement, tasks, and technology (Nazareth, 1998). According to Fraternali (1999), web applications are commonly developed using an evolutionary prototyping approach, whereby the simplified version of the application is deployed as a pilot first, in order to gather user feedback. Thus, web-enabled applications typically undergo continuous refinement and evolution (Ginige, 1998; Nazareth, 1998; Siau, 1998; Standing, 2001). Prototype-based development also leads web-enabled information systems to have much shorter development life cycles, but which, unlike traditional applications, are regrettably developed in a rather adhoc fashion (Carstensen & Vogelsang, 2001). However, the principal difference between the two kinds of applications lies in the broad and diverse group of stakeholders associated with web-based information systems (Gordijn, Akkermans, et al., 2000; Russo, 2000; Earl & Khan, 2001; Carter, 2002; Hasselbring, 2002; Standing, 2002; Stevens & Timbrell, 2002). Stakeholders, or organizational members participating in a common business process (Freeman, 1984), vary in their computer competency, business knowledge, language and culture. This diversity is capable of causing conflict between different stakeholder groups with regards to the establishment of system requirements (Pouloudi & Whitley, 1997; Stevens & Timbrell, 2002). Since, web-based systems transcend organizational, departmental, and even national boundaries, the issue of culture poses a significant challenge to the web systems’ initiators and developers (Miles & Snow, 1992; Kumar & van Dissel, 1996; Pouloudi & Whitley, 1996; Li & Williams, 1999).

Factors Influencing the Acceptance of Web-Based Online Education for Thai Educators

Online education has become widely used and accepted in many universities, especially in North America and Europe, since in the early 1990s. However, its adoption and use in developing countries such as Thailand is at an earlier stage. Many Thai educators are still hesitant to deploy online education for their courses. Many factors affect their decisions to accept online education. Thus, there is a need for research in this area so that educators can plan and prepare in deploying online education. The main objective of this chapter is to investigate the factors that influence Thai educators in accepting online education and highlight how Thai culture and values have an effect on these influencing factors. The framework of this study is based on three adoption and acceptance theories: the Diffusion of Innovation theory (DOI), the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). In-depth interviews were conducted with 22 Thai educators who have used or managed online courses in 12 Thai universities. The findings indicate that the five most influential factors are control beliefs regarding availability of technology, cost of computer technology and Internet access, and accessibility to technology and behavioral beliefs regarding compatibility, and relative advantage. Other important factors (from top six to top ten ranking) include the user’s attitude towards IT, the behavioral beliefs concerning student demand, complexity of online education and trialability, as well as the control belief concerning institutional policy. Less influential factors include control beliefs regarding government policy, management support, ethical considerations, and language barrier, as well as the normative beliefs regarding group influence. Influencing factors that are impacted by Thai culture and values are compatibility, group influence by supervisors, management support and institution’s policy, government policy, and language barrier.

Micropayments for E-Commerce Transactions

Online payments in electronic commerce (e-commerce) are usually carried out with credit cards because they are the most convenient to use. Web sites that do not accept credit cards risk losing their customers. Yet potential customers do not include only credit card holders. There are a lot of potential customers who do not have credit cards, some for cultural reasons, others because of trust implications and others because of cost. Even among those who have credit cards, some do not buy online just because they do not feel that the system is secure enough to give away their credit card information over web pages. More importantly perhaps, credit card payments are not suitable for small-value purchases due to their high-incurred overheads to merchants.

Implementing IT Policy and the Bedevilment of Post-Colonialism - A Case Study in Tanzania

This chapter is concerned with how Tanzania has been socially and economically affected by post-colonialism at a policy level as well as at an ordinary (public) level during the IT policy development process in the country. An IT policy according to Corbitt (1999:309) “is a reflection of the society in which it is formed and is socially constructed within the ideologies which frame that society.” Corbitt (1999:312) goes on to describe the implementation phase of the policy: Policy is implemented in an environment influenced by ideologies which spawn values and beliefs, some of which are known, recognized and obvious to the actors involved, whilst other influences are not recognized, nor obvious. This chapter examines the post-colonial influence, which comprises both directly and indirectly, observed implications within the IT policy development process in Tanzania. The discussion focuses on challenges which face decision and policy-makers in the country. The chapter also proposes an IT policy model which might be developed or designed using a different approach from the traditional policy-making model.