A Cross-Continent Analysis of the Invariance of Product Information in Cross-Border Electronic Commerce

Jason Cohen, Jian Mou, Wenlong Zhu

OAI: oai:igi-global.com:289654 • DOI: 10.4018/JGIM.289654

Cross-border electronic-commerce (CBEC) is growing. However, due to differences in culture, habits, history and language among other factors, consumers in different regions may have different perception towards the same product information on CBEC platforms, which may lead to differences in their cognition of the product with implications for purchase intentions. Presently, little research has attempted to understand whether there are such differences between global consumers through the examination of measurement invariance (MI) in CBEC environments. By using multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA), this study explored the invariance of two product information cognitions on CBEC platforms, namely product description and product awareness, among consumers in North America, Europe, Latin America and Oceania. Data was collected from users of a popular CBEC platform in China. We find no significant differences in understandings and levels of awareness of product information across the four groups of consumers.

Global Information Technology Computer Science and Information Technology IT Research and Theory