Is eCommerce boundary-less? Effects of individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance on Internet shopping

From publicly available data, we identified two national culture dimensions, individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance, and their interaction that influences Internet shopping rates across a wide spectrum of countries. Together, these factors accounted for 14% of the explained variance (on top of the combined variance of 63% explained by national income level, educational level, economic growth rate, unemployment rate, and crime rate) in predicting Internet shopping rates. For countries lower in uncertainty avoidance, individualist cultures show higher Internet shopping rates than do collectivist cultures. Implications for national- and Internet firm-level web design strategies are discussed.