International E-Commerce

The phenomenal worldwide growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web has made it an important vehicle for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) commerce. While the Web offers great opportunities for international electronic commerce by eliminating the barriers of time and space, language, cultural, legal, and infrastructure issues present major impediments to global Internet commerce. In this chapter we address language, cultural, legal, and infrastructure issues as barriers to international electronic commerce. Specifically the chapter presents a framework for identifying and addressing language, cultural, legal and infrastructure issues. The goal is to help organizations meet the challenge of providing online international visitors with a high quality experience, regardless of location, language, business practices, and culture, while complying with legal requirements.