Web sites for cultural products: Marketing potential for US consumers

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine a series of retail Web sites for their potential in marketing cultural products to a projected audience of amenable US consumers and draw conclusions for marketing of cultural products to this market segment. Among 1,288 Web sites purported to market cultural products and crafts, a simple random sample of 101 retail Web sites were content analyzed based on the existence of five categories of information related to: company, product, culture, craft media and type, and transaction and fulfilment. The analysis revealed that a scarcity of information about the products, cultures, and artisans would hinder customers from purchasing cultural products. It was hypothesized that Web sites with greater appeal to the potential market segment would need to expand product information to include who, where, and how a product is made and cultural information to include indigenous symbolism and meaning underlying the products and the lives of artisans and families in the country.

Analysis of Factors Affecting Purchase Intentions for Fashion Cultural Products

“…Horridge (2002, 2004) examined the relationship between tourists' perception of these shops and their purchasing behavior. Recently, the focus of studies has moved from souvenirs to cultural products; this focus also sheds light on the cultural products sales that take place online (Lee & Littrell, 2003. Lee and Littrell (2003) confirmed the growth potential of Internet sales of cultural products by conducting an analysis of Internet websites.…”

“…Recently, the focus of studies has moved from souvenirs to cultural products; this focus also sheds light on the cultural products sales that take place online (Lee & Littrell, 2003. Lee and Littrell (2003) confirmed the growth potential of Internet sales of cultural products by conducting an analysis of Internet websites. Lee and Littrell (2005) focused on the behavior of customers purchasing cultural products online, examining the influence on purchasing behavior of the customers' Internet shopping values and their beliefs about websites that sell cultural products.…”

“…Thus, cultural products that are region-specific can have a competitive advantage (Pugh & Wood, 2004). There is a growing and substantial literature on the significance of cultural products and their impact on local economies (Kim & Littrell, 1999, 2001Lee & Littrell, 2003Swanson & Horridge, 2002Xie et al, 2012;Wilkins, 2011).…”

“…Especially, newly developed websites provide evidence of cross-border commerce between artisans (Jordan, 2000). A growing number of websites are being developed to promote cultural products made by artisans around the world, allowing consumers to shop for these products without having to visit foreign countries ("China's traditional craft shop", 2009; Lee & Littrell, 2003Lee et al, 2009). Online sales of such products have increased globally, and sales are estimated to reach 22 billion USD in the United States alone and 0.28 trillion USD worldwide (Lee & Littrell, 2006).…”

An Analysis of Culture as a Tourism Commodity

“…Souvenirs, in fact, represent the product culture out of its context, in particular, when flating or deflating the value of the product but, also, would lead host populations and consumers the tourists return to their original habitat. In addition, as Lee and Littrell (2003) and Macto refer to the same interpretation of meanings. As culture represents and contains values (FeathersLeod (2006) suggest, some cultural items are also purchased out of their production environment as ton, 1995; Hall, 1997;Jenks, 1995;Lloyd & Thomas, 1998;Odimu, 2002;Richards, 1996a), it in the case of ethnic clothing traded internationally.…”