Globalisation vs. localisation in e-commerce: Cultural-aware interaction design

Online shopping is the product of consumer assessment of the technological medium and the e-vendor. Previous research has evinced a number of interface features which are believed to be associated with trust building in e-commerce. In this paper we address issues of cross-cultural validity of these 'trust attributes' by comparing the relative importance given to them in two European nations (UK and Cyprus) which are characterized by different cultural values such as uncertainty avoidance (the way cultures deal with risk) and individualism/collectivism (the relative importance given to groups vs. individuals). A large-scale survey study suggested a strong cultural bias in the evaluation of trust attributes. The implications of these findings for interface design and localization are discussed.