Cultural Implications for Cross-border E-commerce: The Case of China’s Belt and Road

Abstract

China’s Belt and Road Initiative seeks to develop an international distribution system connected to the internet that provides the nation and its economy with a strategic advantage by more effectively marketing goods and services at a global level. To accomplish this goal, China must deal with significant differences in political, economic, technical, and cultural systems. Currently, researchers have paid inadequate attention to cultural issues; this paper is a step towards correcting this imbalance by pointing to various questions and problems that qualitative research methods can address. At this phase of research, qualitative methods and tools developed from the social sciences are best able to frame research agendas that, in the future, can be considered by formal and quantitative and scientific investigations.