The research design is a general plan or ‘roadmap’ showing how the research question is to be answered. Such a ‘roadmap’, according to Douglas and Craig (1997), is a ‘focal point’ of every study, particularly research involving culture, which is ‘fraught with conceptual and methodological pitfalls’. In order to avoid any possible methodological pitfalls, a number of methodological and practical challenges of different research designs need to be considered (Small, 1999). Consequently, the design of this research project has been carefully planned to ensure the study’s success.
Douglas and Craig (1997) identify three possible designs which researchers can apply while conducting research involving culture and its effect on consumer behaviour, attitudes, values and beliefs. One focuses ‘on examining the universality of consumer
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models in different countries and cultural contexts’. Researchers following this research design test the applicability of research models often developed in the US to other cultures and thus cultural contexts (i.e. countries), which, according to Usunier (1998), offers ‘the implicit starting base for the comparison process’. Such a research design seems to be applied by researchers aiming to investigate the effect of culture on consumer attitudes towards e-commerce, e.g. Yoon (2009), in cases where evaluating the effect of national cultural values on consumer acceptance of e-commerce has the aim of verifying ‘the consumer acceptance model of e-commerce developed by advanced countries when applying it to a developing counties’.
This approach to study culture and its effect on consumer behaviour however has some limitations. Douglas and Craig (1997) for example argue that such a research design may not be appropriate, as cultures and their impact on consumers need to be studied ‘from within’ rather than on the basis of externally imposed models. Studying culture ‘from within’ however creates an emic/ etic dilemma and allows for only limited generalisations of research findings (Berry, 1989). This is further conformed by Malpass (1997) who also points out that studies of culture ‘from within’ are based on emic approaches, which cannot be used as a basis for comparison across countries as ‘the concepts developed in single culture may not be universal’. Furthermore, according to Venkatesh (1995), such a ‘single-country’ research design introduces cultural (ethnocentric) bias. This is confirmed by Engelen and Brettel (2011), who state that in so-called single-country research, ‘an ethnocentrism bias is likely to be present in the research field, as most researchers, being human, cannot help interpreting findings from other national cultures through their own cultural lenses’.
In order to address the limitation of single-country research Malpass (1997) propose to carry out the research project based on etic approach to studying culture comparing two or more cultural contexts on the basis of universal dimensions. Following this direction research design focuses on comparing the similarities and differences in various aspects of consumer behaviour, attitudes, beliefs, values, etc. among two (or more) different cultures. This approach, according to Douglas and Craig (1997), is typically adopted where the cultural context (i.e. country) is used as a basic
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unit of analysis, and researchers aim to highlight similarities and differences between cultural contexts and thus cultures. This research design seems to be commonly employed in studies aiming to investigate the effect of culture on consumer e-commerce acceptance. For example, Karvonen et al. (2000) compare and contrast the attitudes towards e-commerce of Finnish and Swedish consumers; Pavlou and Chai (2002), while investigating e-commerce drivers across cultures, test their research model using data collected from consumers based in China and the US; Smith et al. (2013) compare the online shopping behaviour of consumers based in Norway, Germany and the US; and, most recently, Ng (2013), while evaluating the intention to make purchases on social commerce websites across cultures, assesses similarities and differences between Latin America and East Asia, concluding that there are fewer barriers to overcome in Latin America than in East Asia for consumers to accept e-commerce.
This commonly employed cross-cultural research design has not escaped criticism. Researchers (Campbell and Stanley, 1966; Malpass, 1977) argue that it involves ‘static comparison’, resulting in ‘replications’ of studies, which does not advance knowledge. This also confirmed by Douglas and Craig (1997) and further verified by Usunier (1998). Furthermore Lee et al. (2008) while noticing that the majority of those comparative research projects focus on two cultures and/ or cultural contexts claim that they present insufficient coverage of culture and its context and thus should be considered as ‘pilot studies’ with rather limited usefulness. This view is also held by the early work by Sekaran (1981; 1983).
The third research design, according to Douglas and Craig (1997), focuses on ‘the impact of ethnic identity on behaviour as well as the assimilation and acculturation of different immigrant groups’. This study design therefore allows for examination of the impact of exposure to direct or indirect influences from cultures other than the one individuals subscribe to (i.e. other than their native culture) on the behavioural patterns, attitudes, values, beliefs, etc. of a given cultural group. Further, it also examines how those behavioural patterns change with movement from one culture (i.e. native culture) to another (i.e. non-native culture); thus, it enables assessment of the effect of the acculturation process on consumers’ behavioural patterns, attitudes, values and beliefs. For this reason it is adopted as the main design of this research project. This research project therefore aims to assess the effect of direct exposure to the influence of another culture (i.e. non-native culture), which, according to Douglas and Craig (1997), occurs
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when individuals permanently or temporarily enter a culture other than the one to which they subscribe (i.e. other than their native culture).
In order to assess such an effect, Douglas and Craig (1997) recommend using a comparative research design, where consumers’ behavioural patterns, attitudes, beliefs and values are simultaneously compared and contrasted before and after their movement into and exposure to the values of the non-native culture. The appropriateness of the comparative research design for evaluating the effect of acculturation process on consumption patterns confirmed by Berry (1997), who states that ‘research on acculturation has to be comparative’.
Consequently, this research project adopts a cross-cultural research design, as recommended by Douglas and Craig (1997). In essence, consumers’ behavioural patterns, attitudes, values and beliefs will be directly compared and contrasted from the perspective of two cultures: the consumers’ native culture (the culture which individuals subscribe to) and their non-native culture (the culture to which consumers move either temporarily or permanently). The study design is presented in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2. Research design (adopted from Douglas and Craig, 1997) (Arrows indicate simultaneous comparison)
Native culture Non-native
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