Study Of Chinese And American Consumers’ Perceptions Of Online Retailers’ Ethics: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

In recent years， Chinese consumers have been no longer unfamiliar with theonline shopping. As a new marketing channel， not only does it provide rich productinformation and personalized services， but also enables consumers to go shoppingwhenever and wherever， which has attracted more and more consumers to adopt theway of online shopping. However， more and more ethical problems of network haverevealed in the development of the network shopping， it directly affected consumer’ sshopping behavior and hindered the development of online retail industry. Therefore，research on perceptions of consumers regarding online retailers’ ethics (CPEOR) is vitalto the development of network retail. Until now， academia has been paying closeattention to the study on the trust problems of online retailing， little study on theCPEOR and analysis from cross-cultural perspective is vacant in our country.In this essay，we studied the impact of differences between Chinese and Americanculture on consumers’ support for ethical network retailers and CPEOR fromconsumers’ perspective. Firstly， this paper defined CPEOR and its measurements.Secondly， by the analysis of Hofstede culture theory， Johari window theory andrelationship marketing theory， it proposed the hypnosis of the influence of culturaldifferences on consumers’ support for ethical online retailers and CPEOR. Finally， theessay undertook questionnaires and mainly used the covariance analysis， one sample ttest， multivariate analysis of variance to analyze the impact of differences betweenChinese and American culture on consumers’ support for ethical network retailers andCPEOR. As a result， the paper drew the conclusions as follows:(1) Chinese consumers were more likely to support ethical online retailers thanAmerican consumers， the reason is Chinese culture is collectivism and Americanculture is individualism. In addition， the study found demographic variables， such asage， gender， occupation， education， network experience， purchase amount hadeffect on consumers’ support for ethical online retailers(2) Chinese consumers’ perceived importance of online retailers’ ethics weresecurity﹥fulfillment， privacy﹥non-deception. American consumers’ perceivedimportance of online retailers’ ethics were security﹥fulfillment﹥privacy﹥non-deception.(3) Cultural difference of uncertainty avoidance between Chinese and Americanaffected their safety perception. The difference of relationship culture had effect on consumers’ perceived non-deception and fulfillment， but it was not very significant.The differences between Chinese collectivism culture value and Americanindividualism cultural value had no influence on consumers’ perceived privacy.