A Trination Analysis of Social Exchange Relationships in E-Dating

Abstract

More than half a billion users across the globe have availed themselves of e-dating services. This chapter looks at the marketing and cross-cultural aspects of mate-seeking behavior in e-dating. We content analyzed 238 advertisements from online matrimonial sites in three countries: India (n=79), Hong Kong (n=80), and Australia (n=79). Frequencies of mention of the following ten attribute categories in the advertiser’s self-description were established using post hoc quantitative analysis: love, physical status, educational status, intellectual status, occupational status, entertainment services, money, demographic information, ethnic information, and personality traits. Past research on mate selection using personal ads and the three countries’ positions on Hofstede’s dimensions of culture were used in hypotheses generation. The results support several culture-based differences in people’s self-description in online personal ads; however, some anticipated differences were not realized, suggesting that some cultural differences may not be as strong as Hofstede (2001) suggests.