Editorial

The enormous growth potential of Internet markets in emerging economies has attracted many established Internet firms to set up a presence. Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence suggests that in many emerging markets like China, Russia, and Brazil, users have a clear preference for domestic over foreign Internet services. Why do users choose domestic Internet services over more internationally known and accepted foreign ones? Are these services technically superior in terms of meeting the users’ requirements, or are there other social factors that drive this preference? The answers to these questions have not been adequately investigated. In “Understanding Chinese Users’ Preference for Domestic over Foreign Internet Services,” Lih-Bin Oh and Yao Zhang provide a framework that incorporates technical and social factors affecting users’ choice of Internet services. The authors surveyed Internet users in the Chinese cities of Beijing and Xiamen across four Internet service categories of instant messaging, auction, search engine, and portal. These users were asked to provide comparative assessments of domestic and foreign Internet services. The authors discovered that superior technical quality comprising of content localization, extent of information fit-to-task, service responsiveness, service innovativeness, and service reliability will lead to preference for domestic service. The implication arising from this finding is that foreign Internet service firms should pay attention to the localization of content and adapting their services to fit the needs of their local market. They should also improve the responsiveness and reliability of their services through the establishment of local technical infrastructure and more importantly, responsible and responsive local operation teams to support their services. Besides these technical aspects, foreign Internet service firms should also ramp up their marketing efforts to increase user awareness. This is because research findings indicate that the influence from other users through word of mouth is an important predictor for preference and that perceived globalness of foreign Internet service is negatively related to preference for domestic Internet service. Perhaps the most unexpected finding of the study is that the level of consumer ethnocentrism has no effect on preference. Contrary to common beliefs that consumers in developing countries hold strong nationalistic sentiments toward product and service choices, the findings indicate that this does not seem to apply when it comes to Internet services. This provides an encouraging signal to aspiring foreign Internet service firms intending to enter an emerging market that they would not be disadvantaged due to this factor. Taken together, the research provides some insights for both domestic and foreign Internet service firms with an understanding of the determinants that affect Internet users’ preference. The country-of-origin effect is a marketing phenomenon that has been researched to a great extent. This phenomenon can roughly be defined as the extent to which the place of manufacturing influences consumers’ product evaluations. Consumers have different attitudes toward different products manufactured in various countries. Preconceived notions and opinions form a large portion of the decision-making