USE OF E-COMMERCE WEBSITES AMONG YOUNG ADULTS IN FINLAND AND FLANDERS, BELGIUM Päivö Laine Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences, Finland Jan Pieter Verckens Department of Business Studies Lessius University College, Antwerp, Belgium ABSTRACT The importance of electronic commerce has increased rapidly in retailing. The Internet is a global medium and consumer markets are becoming more and more global. Internationalization and localization are complementary processes of website globalization. The local requirements of the target audience can be met more easily if the international aspects of trade have been considered from the start. Our aim was to study the E-commerce experiences of young Internet users in Finland and Dutch-speaking Belgium and find out whether the differences have relevance for the store design especially in communicative and cultural respects. A questionnaire study was conducted among a group of higher education students in Finland and Flanders, Belgium. The respondents were asked about their interest in online shopping, types of electronic stores they prefer to visit, ways of finding electronic stores and the role of languages in the shopping procedure. No major statistically significant differences between the responses of the two groups could be detected despite the differences in the national cultures of Finland and Belgium. The infrastructural differences between the two countries, such as population density and geographical distances, also have an influence on the prerequisites of electronic commerce. These factors may also explain the higher international orientation of the Belgian respondents in comparison to their Finnish counterparts. KEYWORDS electronic commerce, globalization, localization, web communication 1. INTRODUCTION Along with the increased use of the Internet in general, the popularity of electronic commerce has continued to grow in the new millennium in all age groups. The volume of business-to-consumer electronic commerce measured in euros was 2.5 times higher in 2006 than in 2003 (Tilastokeskus 2007a). According to Statistics Finland, growth in online shopping has become faster in the age group 20-29 in particular (Tilastokeskus 2004). About 40 % of the age group were users of e-commerce websites in spring 2004. The corresponding figure for the age group 15–19 was 24 %. The lower figure can be explained by the fact that the representatives of the younger age group have less money of their own and less opportunity of using a credit card as a method of payment. According to European statistics (European Commission, Eurostat 2007), in 2007 the percentage of individuals who ordered goods or services over the Internet for private use in the last three months was 32 % in Finland and 15 % in Belgium. The corresponding figures in the age group of 16 to 24-year olds were 44 % in Finland and 16 % in Belgium. On the other hand, the number of enterprises that have received orders online in the last calendar year is higher in Belgium than in Finland. 18 % of Belgian enterprises have received online orders, whereas the corresponding figure in Finland is 15 %. In Finland consumers have found online shopping faster than entrepreneurs, which means that a large proportion of Finnish online purchases are made in foreign online stores. In the current situation, the low dollar value has attracted Finnish online shoppers to USA electronic stores. However, according to the survey conducted by Soprano Oyj (2007), the number of Finnish online stores is expected to double by the end of the year 2008. As more and more online stores appear on the market, there will be more competition and sellers are compelled to pay more attention to the quality of their websites. Usability and credibility factors become IADIS International Conference e-Commerce 2008 17