Conclusion

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Cultural differences in e-commerce do exist in the process of expanding online business across borders. The main cultural differences lie in language, values and infrastructures in payment and delivery and so on.

Good examples tailoring the global web sites to suit differences in local cultures are Yahoo! and Bol.com. Language translation is only one of the factors that led to the success of Yahoo!. Creating a locally accepted payment scheme and translating the web site to local language are only the first step of localization for company's globalization effort.

A logistics and distribution system is another barrier that has hindered the growth of B2C business in China. After more than 50 years of development, a state-owned comprehensive logistic and distribution system has been set up with the participation of department stores, grocery stores, book stores and post offices. The American dotcoms that want to enter into China could utilize the delivery capability of traditional businesses instead of setting up a new system by themselves.

China's infrastructure including payment system is poor but improving. For example, China's big four commercial banks—the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, the Agricultural Bank of China and the Bank of China—have yet to reach every corner of the country, once they realize that online payment systems can bring huge profits to them, they are bound to take part in the improvement of online payment systems proactively.

A pragmatic strategy of "Order Online, Pay Offline" has been proved to be an effective way of doing e-commerce in China at present.

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