A Search and Deliberation Framework for Understanding Consumers’ Foreign Online Purchasing

Information technology (IT) as an international marketing tool has been acknowledged in several studies (Beccera et al. 2013; Chang and Chen 2008; Jarvenpaa et al. 2000; Mukherjee and Nath 2007; Safari et al. 2013), and the Internet as an alternative path for firm internationalisation has been explored recently (Kim 2003; Lim et al. 2004; Pezderka and Sinkovics 2011; Sinkovics et al. 2013; Yamin and Sinkovics 2006). Similarly, consumers’ domestic online purchasing behaviour has been investigated extensively in the last two decades (e.g., Beldad et al. 2010; Jarvenpaa et al. 2000; Mukherjee and Nath; 2007; Sabiote et al. 2012). These studies have been aimed at understanding the relationship between consumers and retailers on the Internet, usually where both parties are physically located within the same country. International business and marketing scholars have also extensively studied the phenomenon of firm online internationalisation, that is, ‘the conduct of business transactions across national boundaries, where the “crossing” of national boundaries takes place in the virtual rather than the real or spatial domain’ (Yamin and Sinkovics 2006: 340). The literature on online or Internet internationalisation has usually assumed that the ‘active’ party is the firm as seller or vendor. The possibility of consumers actively using the Internet to find and transact with vendors located in foreign markets has not been extensively studied except in a few cases (e.g., Hadjikhani et al. 2011; Safari 2012). However this is an interesting and important phenomenon that merits careful study. It is interesting because it is a phenomenon that could not exist prior to the establishment and routine access to the Internet as a search and transaction medium, and it is important because this phenomenon has the potential to change the development of the global economy. Through its website, a retailer potentially has access to the whole world as prospective customers. This notion means that small firms have the potential to transform into large multinational firms. However, most customers still make their online purchases from domestic online retailers based on the notion that foreign online purchasing is risky and complicated. This raises important issues that need to be explored in order to understand consumer risk perception in this context. New theoretical tools are needed for this purpose.