How does culture affect business?

Cultural problems may function as an obstacle to the development of trade. For instance: Female in West Bengal or Assam would prefer to buy Saree rather than western clothes because of their culture. So western clothes trade in West Bengal might not be as successful as in other parts of India.

People are all children of their cultures; in order to know, have relationships, learn from, or benefit from other individuals, we need to understand and analyze their “mental software: their culture”.

Communities have their own  characteristics and cultures that distinguish them from others, consumer culture has  become the prevalent culture in many societies in both developed and developing countries

©https://d-nb.info/105130346X/34

Influence of Culture on E-Commerce.

Culture is viewed as a significant factor that affects the adoption of information technology. It is apparent that every culture has developed with its own history, language, and religions creating identities. These  identities clearly  affect  a  country’s  perspective  on  the  world.  

Culture  has  an  effect  on  the country’s response to diverse events including the adoption of information technology. Cultures have shown a definite effect on  information technology adoption. It can affect whether an entire information technology development is completely rejected by a nation or if it is partially accepted with the rejection of certain features of the technology .Culture, religion  and language are  significant issues  in internet technology adoption in any country. 

Stepping Stones for setting up a successful ecommerce business:

1. Building Trust:

Trust has a longer term impact on consumer e-loyalty through satisfaction.It directly and indirectly affects a consumer's purchase decision in combination with risk and  benefit.  Online sellers need to create an environment in which a consumer can be confident about any online transactions. Two elements of such an environment are trust and satisfaction - two essential ingredients for successful long-term business relationships with customers. The issue of trust is more critical in electronic commerce because an Internet purchase is based on the consumer’s confidence in processes that are not transparent online in contrast to Offline form of business.

©https://www.marxentlabs.com/culture/how-to-build-trust/

2. Advertising:

Advertising works as a potential method of meaning transfer by bringing the consumer goods and a representation of the culturally constituted world together within a particular advertisement. Ecommerce should focus on where their traffic comes from, what social media outlets their target customers use, and other sites their customers tend to visit. For instance, furniture retailers may find that Houzz generates the most traffic; and a wedding business could find Pinterest as a top source.

Advertising using social media apps like Facebook, Instagram , Blogging, or  Launching podcast ads, Using email promotion, Promoting Consumer reviews can help to attract consumers towards e-commerce business. Advertisements should be done with utmost care keeping in mind cultural aspects,beliefs, religious sentiments, ethics of consumer, as Advertisements which are against human esteem and human values can  affect the human spirit gradually and subconsciously.

Small business owners  whose budgets are tight can try using Paid Search Marketing like Google AdWords and Microsoft Ads which could bring  traffic to the website and help the business feature prominently when people search for relevant phrases or can List information about their businesses on Google My Business and Yahoo listing for free. 

©https://salesoar.com/en/

3. Knowing Target Audience :

The key to running a successful e-commerce business is to know your target audience well – including what they like, how much money they earn and have to spend,  what they value in terms of delivery, customer service and add-ons.

For Instance: the target market for furniture stores is by classifying customers based on where they are in their life journey Whether they are University Students, Young couples, Families with small children or teenage children, Retirees, Small business owners etc. Based on this, the furniture store can create a variety for university students. They can start leasing furniture as they require it for a shorter period as compared to people working in an office. 

  ©https://neilpatel.com/blog /target-audience/

4. Doing a competitive analysis:

Doing thorough research of the competition can help the business to know who they are up against and how they can differentiate their business from others.The competitive analysis can vary depending on what a business man is trying to learn from competitors. It can be done around a specific element like knowing about competitors' websites , their pricing system, their target audience whether they are targeting university students , married, or retiree. Competitive Analysis is important as a business can’t effectively compete without knowing their competitors.

https://www.pivony.com/blog/how-to-do-a-competitor-analysis-templates-and-examples-2021

5. SWOT Analysis:

SWOT Analysis is the analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of a company. It’s useful to highlight the critical aspects of the and external environment of the company that could affect its choices. Internal aspect refers to strengths and weaknesses while the external aspect refers to Opportunities and threats.

SWOT analysis provides a unique opportunity to gain greater insight into how the business operates.It allows the business to take a broader, bird’s eye view of the business and the position it occupies in the industry.

https://www.rhythmsystems.com/blog/4-steps-to-swot-a-pandemic