While previous studies indicate that female consumers display less trust for online shopping than males do, there is little research to addresses the reasons behind this difference. Our study applies a combination of both self‐report and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to compare the cognitive and affective components of attitudes in men and women toward online shopping in China. Although female participants showed no significant difference from male participants in affective attitudes toward online shopping in the self‐report condition, females associated online shopping more frequently with unpleasant adjectives and off‐line shopping with pleasant adjectives in the indirect IAT condition. The opposite pattern was found for the male group. This finding indicates a wanting but disliking attitude toward online shopping among the female consumers in China, which provides a unique theoretical contribution to consumer behavior theory and helps to enhance e‐marketers’ market targeting and segmentation effectiveness in China.

Cultural differences in speech acts are common challenges in management involving Chinese and Western managers. Comparing four groups – Native-speaking Chinese, English-speaking Chinese, Chinese-speaking Westerners, and non-Chinese- speaking Westerners, we assessed the effects of language and ethnicity on the ability to predict communication obstacles in a management team scenario. Bilingual subjects were less likely to be influenced by ethnic biases. Still, bilinguals were not more likely to adjust their metacognitions about communication toward those of the native speakers. The study creates a link between management, cognition and linguistics, as well as having consequences for the study of metacognition in cross-cultural management.