CULTURES, ROLES, AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF
STAKEHOLDERS IN MULTICULTURAL REQUIREMENTS
ENGINEERING
Designing e-Commerce for Female Market in Saudi Arabia
Khulood Rambo and Kecheng Liu
Informatics Research Centre,University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, England
Keywords: Culture, Stakeholders, Authority, Design Decisions, e-commerce, Saudi Female Market, Valuation Framing.
Abstract: Cultural differences affect all phases of systems development life cycle; from the planning phase all the way
to the testing and maintenance. Modelling stakeholders is part of the requirements engineering phase, it
helps analysts to understand the sociology of the system. Multicultural requirement engineering involves
modelling stakeholders from different cultures. An in-depth analysis of stakeholders is essential to
understand the influence of their culture on the roles and responsibilities assigned to them. Valuation
framing is one of the organisational semiotics methods that analyse the impact of an innovation such as a
new product or information system. It is based on Hall’s ten primary message systems (PMS) or the
taxonomy of cultural patterns of behaviour. It aims to understand the impact of culture on stakeholders in
order to detect how people involved will be affected and how they will feel about the intended innovative
change. This paper applies the valuation framing method to analyse the cultural influence of the
stakeholders involved in developing e-commerce applications targeting female consumers in Saudi Arabia.
1 INTRODUCTION
Multicultural systems development is no longer a
phenomenon, but rather a practice resulting from
conscious business decisions. Both practitioners and
researchers need to become aware of the ongoing
cultural challenges that stakeholders face in their
requirements engineering interaction. Due to its
communication and collaboration-intensive nature,
as well as the inherent interaction with most other
development processes; requirements engineering is
becoming a key challenge in multicultural systems
development. Collaboration among stakeholder
groups suffers from problems generated by
differences in culture, language, attitudes towards
hierarchy, and communication style. This creates a
unique set of problems in the requirement
engineering processes, which might lead
stakeholders to tolerate ambiguity in requirements
without recognising the need to collectively aim for
shared understanding of requirements and its
processes (Damian, 2007).
Involving the right stakeholders is one of the
most difficult and common concerns among all
projects. Yet, stakeholders’ identification is the most
if not the only vital process to discover, specify, and
test valid requirements (Alexander, et al., 2004).
Some stakeholders involved in developing e-
commerce applications targeting Saudi female
market fully control their accessibility to these
applications. Others have the authority on female
consumers’ adoption and use of these applications
(Rambo and Liu, 2010). Cultural differences are the
key determiner of stakeholders’ different
perspectives on the benefit of such innovation. It is
essential to understand the complete picture of the
social system in Saudi Arabia in order to understand
the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in the
process of developing such innovation.
Valuation framing is one of MEASUR (methods
for eliciting, analysing, and specifying user
requirements) methods. It analyse the cultural
impacts of innovation in a society members by
examining Hall’s ten cultural norms towards this
innovation (Stamper, 1988). This paper aims to
reveal the cultural impact of stakeholders in relation
to the benefits and drawbacks which take into
account the interests and beliefs of all stakeholders.
Valuation framing method is used to help analysts
182
Liu K. and Rambo K.
CULTURES, ROLES, AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF STAKEHOLDERS IN MULTICULTURAL REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING - Designing e-Commerce for Female Market in Saudi Arabia.
DOI: 10.5220/0003267901820189
In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations (ICISO 2010), page
ISBN: 978-989-8425-26-3
Copyright
c
 2010 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

discover the cultural impact of each stakeholder on
the design decisions of such innovation.
The remaining part of the paper is organised as
follows: section 2 provides background information
about Halls ten primary messages systems (PMS)
organisational semiotics, valuation farming,
stakeholder identification, and the social system in
Saudi Arabia. Section 3 implements the valuation
framing method to articulate the Saudi stakeholders’
cultural influence on the development process of e-
commerce targeting female market. Section 4 will
discuss the method and findings of this paper. And
finally section 5 will conclude the major aspects of
the paper and align the findings with the future work
of this research.
2 BACKGROUND
This section will briefly identify the main topics
discussed in the paper and present general
background information of the methods
implemented in this paper. It will start by defining
the Hall’s ten primary messages systems. Then it
will explain how they are used in the method of
valuation framing. And finally it will briefly discuss
the main cultural aspects of the social structure in
Saudi Arabia.
2.1 Hall’s Primary Messages Systems
(PMS)
The word culture (from the Latin ‘colo,-ere’,
meaning ‘to cultivate’,’ to inhabit’ or ‘to honour’)
has been defined and used in many ways throughout
different contexts. More than 156 different
definitions for culture can be identified (Kroeber, et
al., 1952) (Cultural Computing and the Self
Concept: Towards Unconscious Metamorphosis,
2007). One of the most popular definitions of culture
in the field of anthropology is suggested by the
British anthropologist Edward Taylor in the
nineteenth century. Taylor defines culture as “the
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society”.
Another more recent definition of culture by Downs
“a mental map which guides us in our relations to
our surroundings and to other people” (Ferraro,
2001).
One of the issues that concerned the
anthropologist Hall was how one culture differs
from another and how one can communicate this
difference in general terms (Hall, 1959,1981).
According to Hall, culture is not one thing but a
complex series of activities interrelated in many
ways, activities with origins deeply buried in the
past when there were no cultures or humans. The
development of language and technology, an
interrelated pair, made possible the storing of
knowledge. Hall defined ten separate kinds of
human activity which he labelled primary message
systems (PMS). One can start the study of culture
with any one of the ten and eventually come out
with a complete picture. The primary message
systems (PMS) are:
Interaction To interact with the environment is
to be alive and to fail to do so is to be dead (Hall,
1959,1981), when two or more people or things
communicate with or react to each other
(Dictionaries, 2009), i.e. language, vocal inflections
means of communication, posture, gesture, etc
(Stamper, 1988).
Association All living things arrange their lives
in some sort of recognisable pattern of association.
The concern here is about the various ways in which
societies and their components are organised or
structured (Hall, 1959,1981), i.e. community, class,
caste, roles, organisation, teams, hierarchy, etc
(Stamper, 1988).
Subsistence is included in everything from
individual food habits to the economy of a country
(Hall, 1959,1981), i.e. physical livelihood, eating,
excretion and (indirectly) income working for a
living (Stamper, 1988).
Bisexuality (classification) Behaviour that is
exhibited by male in one culture may be classed as
feminine in another. All cultures differentiate
between men and women, and usually when a given
behaviour pattern becomes associated with one sex it
will be dropped by the other (Hall, 1959,1981), i.e.
differentiation of sexes, marriage, family (Stamper,
1988).
Territoriality It is a technical term used to
describe the talking possession, use and defence of a
territory on the part of living organisms. Salesmen
and distributors have their own territories which they
will defend like any other living organism. The
symbolism of the phrase “to move in on someone” is
completely accurate and appropriate (Hall,
1959,1981), i.e. division of space, where things go,
where to do things, ownership (Stamper, 1988).
Temporality such practices as age-grading (in a
society according to rather rigid age groups)
combine both time and association (Hall,
1959,1981). It means long lead times, repetitive
work because of iterations, many face to face
meetings, i.e. division of time, when to do things,
sequence duration, cycles (Stamper, 1988).
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Learning and Acquisition people in different
cultures learn to learn differently and go about the
process of acquiring culture in their own way.
Learning to learn differently is something that has to
be faced by multicultural stakeholders who have
stake in the same project. It seems inconceivable to
the average person brought up in one culture that
something as basic as this could be done differently
from the way they themselves were taught. The fact
is, however, once people have learned to learn in a
given way, it is extremely hard for them to learn in
any other way. This is because the process of
learning they have acquired a long set of tacit
conditions and assumptions in which learning is
imbedded. The rest of culture reflects the way one
learns, since culture is “learned and shared
behaviour”. Learning, then, is one of the basic
activities of life (Hall, 1959,1981). However, these
differences represent one of the barriers that have to
be overcome each time two people raised in
different cultures interact over any but the shortest
period of time, i.e. education, training, rearing, what
gets taught or learned (Stamper, 1988).
Play people laugh and tell jokes, knowing
the humour of people from different cultures, will
give you a wealth of information about that specific
culture. Many people around the world have what
are known as” joking relationships”, also in some
cultures, there is a category of relationship known as
the “play mate” (Hall, 1959,1981), i.e. recreation,
fun, games, art, sport, what is amusing (Stamper,
1988).
Defence (Protection) Human beings use
defensive techniques in many matters in their lives
such as warfare, territory, religion, medicine (against
diseases), and law enforcement (against criminals).
They feel they must cope within destructive forces
within their own persons. The main point which
should be kept in mind is about the way different
cultures tend to treat religion. In the Middle East,
Islam plays a more pervasive role than Christianity
does today in Europe. People in the western world
have difficulty grasping the extent to which religion
pass through all aspects of life in the Arab world.
The content of religion, its organisation, and the
manner in which it is integrated with the rest of life
varies greatly from culture to culture (Hall,
1959,1981), i.e. protection against elements, other
groups, disease and the supernatural (Stamper,
1988).
Exploitation human beings developed
extensions of practically everything we used to do
with our bodies. All manmade material things can be
treated as extensions of what was once done with the
body or same specialised part of the body
(McLauhan, et al., 2001;Hall, 1959,1981). A
transportation vehicle for example is an extension of
what we use to do with our feet, i.e. tools,
technology, systems, materials and their uses, skills
(Stamper, 1988).
2.2 Valuation Framing
Valuation framing is a method proposed by
MEASUR (methods for eliciting, analysing, and
specifying user requirements) (Stamper, 1988).
These techniques deals with matching the system
design effort to the social and economic
infrastructure, matching the communications
subsystems to the informal exchange of information,
and matching the control subsystem to the prevailing
ethical practices.
Valuation framing takes Hall’s ten categories of
cultural norms, slightly modifies them and applies
them quite differently to gauging the impact of an
innovation by treating the general culture and the
subcultures of the stakeholders as though they were
musical instruments made of resonant networks of
strings that the innovation strikes to produce the
reverberations of the stakeholders’ reactions that the
IS designer must listen to. That’s a no trivial, quite
novel and a useful extension of Hall’s work
(Stamper, 1988).
After identifying all the involved stakeholders
(stakeholders identification is another method from
MEASUR) the valuation will be applied taken into
account the interest of all stakeholders (Alexander,
et al., 2004;Kolkman, 1993;Liu, 2000;Tan, 2006).
The total system will be the object of valuation. The
stakeholder will be accustomed to having, in his
familiar cultural setting, a range of available
behaviour patterns. These cultural patterns are
divided into the ten areas discussed above and
subsequently the analyst asks, hypothesizes or
predicts how the proposed innovation will affect the
stakeholders that were identified.
There will be impacts on how people
communicate, how they associate, their subsistence
or economic position, differential effects for the two
sexes, their use of time(temporality) and
space(territoriality), how they learn to use the new
system, how it affects their creative or recreational
behaviour, their vulnerability of power (protection),
and their tools and skills (Kolkman, 1993;Tan,
2006).The technique of valuation framing assesses
the cultural impact of technological innovation on all
the stakeholders. Hall’s ten criteria are the criteria
for a full assessment of gains and losses of each
stakeholder in relation to the innovation or change in
the social system (Tan, 2006).
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2.3 Culture of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is an Islamic country, governed by
Islamic Sharia law (Ahmed, 2008). Sharia literally
means “The Way” and refers to the body of Islamic
law codified by the Quran (Holy Book) and
prophetic teachings and traditions (Esposito, et al.,
2007). Islam acts as a primary force in determining
the social norms, patterns of behaviour, values,
traditions, obligations, and practices (Almunajjed,
1997;Al-Saggaf, 2004). While Islamic law is derived
from various theological schools of jurisprudence
interpreting Divine Law; these scholarly
interpretations vary depending on the local customs
and social traditions of a specific social reality and
does not necessarily apply to other Islamic regions.
For instance, some of the restrictions on Saudi
female are mainly imposed by scholarly
interpretations (Almunajjed, 1997; Esposito, et al.,
2007; Rambo, et al., 2009).
The culture in Saudi Arabia does not permit
women to mix with unrelated men. Gender
segregation is a general norm that touches on
virtually every aspect of public and social life.
Education, banking, access to public transportation
and job opportunities are still rooted in strongly held
traditional values that do not permit the mixing of
the sexes. Almost all public places have areas that
are restricted to women. Restaurants have special
family dining rooms for women. There are shopping
centres exclusively for women, and certain
boutiques in Jeddah have a closed door with ‘for
Ladies only’ written on it. Busses are divided into
two sections to create a separate seating area for
women. Banks have women only branches
(Almunajjed, 1997; Al-Saggaf, 2004; Rambo, et al.,
2009).
There is a strong sense in the Arabian society of
what is public and what is private. Women (in Saudi
Arabia), belong to the private world (Lipsky, 1952;
Almunajjed, 1997). In this segregated world the
male-female dichotomy is linked to a public-private
world where females are associated with the concept
of indoors and males with the outdoors (Rambo, et
al., 2010).Both gender and age plays a vital role in
specifying roles and responsibilities in an Arabian
family (Al-Sabt, 1996 - 2006). The father is usually
the head of the family, the policy maker, and the
provider of the family. While the mother is major
role relies in raising children and managing the
household. This structure is not necessarily the norm
of these days Arabian families since mothers now
also provide for their families. Sons and daughters
are raised to follow the inherited traditions and are
given responsibilities that suit their age and gender.
Sons are usually taught to be protectors of their
sisters and help the father with male duties, while
daughters are taught to be the source of emotional
support in the family as well as helping the mother
with other female duties in the house (Al-Sabt, 1996
- 2006).
Internet was introduced in Saudi Arabia between
1998-1999 after a long period of discussion and
consultations with the Saudi authorities. It was
finally agreed that a tailored version would be made
available to the public. To enable this tailoring a
huge filter system was set up in conjunction with an
American company. The reason for having such a
filter system was that the Saudi authorities had
serious concerns about the arrival of undesirable
materials to homes of the Saudi society via computer
screens (Al-Saggaf, 2004;Sait, et al., 2004).
3 STAKEHOLDERS CULTURAL
IMPACT ON E-COMMERCE
DESIGN FOR FEMALES
MARKET IN SAUDI ARABIA
The valuation system is based upon a number of
interest groups or stakeholders. These will often
belong to quite different subcultures with different
sets of values but, moreover a proposed action
course, especially an innovative one, tends to have
rather different impacts on their lives, so amplifying
the likely differences between the various
stakeholder judgements (Kolkman, 1993).
Organisational semiotics provides two methods
to conduct this kind of analysis. The two methods
are complementary to one another because the
former identifies the roles and responsibilities of
stakeholders while the latter identifies the cultural
perspectives of each stakeholder. There always must
be people involved who attach values to the systems
that we create, otherwise there is no point in having
these systems, and normally there are several
interest groups involved, the groups that attach
positive or negative values to our system constitute
the valuation framing. They include the agents who
are affected by the system even when they have no
primary role in creating and using it, provided that,
in the long run they can affect its existence. This
raise the following question in analyst’s mind “who
are the people whose values determine whether the
system is a success or not?” (Kolkman, 1993; Liu,
2000).
All stakeholders involved in developing B2C e-
commerce applications targeting Saudi female
market have already been identified and discussed in
greater details in previous work (Rambo and Liu,
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2010). As shown in table1 stakeholder groups come
most likely from different cultures, some are locals
and others are international ones. Stakeholders
groups include: the government (legislators), male
guardians (bystanders), high street retailers
(competitors), electronic payment financial
institutions (collaborators), online retailers or online
shops owners and the website designers (providers),
shipping and delivery companies (clients), internet
service providers (principals), and the Saudi female
market (actors). Each of these groups will have a
cultural system that governs how it will value the
development of e-commerce applications targeting
the Saudi female market. Different stakeholders will
more likely to react differently to the proposed
project. To enable a comprehensive valuation,
valuation framing has been developed which is
based on the ten primary message systems
classification of the cultural norms.
The basic principle of valuation framing is as
follows: The stakeholder will be accustomed to
having in her/his familiar cultural setting, a range of
available behaviour patterns. These cultural patterns
are divided into ten areas and subsequently the
analyst asks, hypothesises or predicts how the
proposed innovation will affect the stakeholders that
were identified earlier (Rambo and Liu, 2010).
Without the checklist it is easy to overlook
aspects of the situation which is analysed. Reactions,
once identified can be expressed more clearly in
terms of beneficial or disadvantages or even in terms
which address specific feelings and attitudes.
Valuation framing can be used for making a
quick scan of all stakeholders in a problem situation.
This can result in an improved understanding of
their cultural reverberations concerning both the
existing situation and possible changes. The content
of valuation framing is employed for detecting
stakeholders’ cultural perspectives which define
certain types of action courses as a necessity or a
desirable.
This section will provide examples of valuation
of four different stakeholders from the four spheres
identified in the stakeholder identification model.
These examples will illustrate how culture can
influence stakeholders’ responses to the adoption
and use of e-commerce applications. The first
stakeholder example presented is the Saudi female
consumers. Table 2 explains the ten cultural
taxonomies of adopting and using e-commerce
applications:
Table 1: Stakeholders Identification of e-commerce
design in Saudi Arabia.
Online
female
consum
er
Stakeholders Roles and Responsibilities
Stakeholder Role Responsibility
Contrib
ution
sphere
online female
consumer(local)
A
ctor
To take the online
purchasing action to
receive the desired
good
Internet Service
Providers(local)
Prin
cipal
To envision values
of online shopping
and connect all
stakeholders
together
Source
sphere
Shipment and
Delivery
Companies(inter
national or
local)
C
lient
To gain benefit from
performing online
shopping and lose
benefits when online
shopping is not used
Online Retailers
Web
designers(intern
ational and
local)
P
rovi
der
To facilitate
necessary conditions
to perform online
shopping
Market
sphere
Electronic
finanical payment
institutions
(internernationa
l and local)
C
ollab
orato
r
To have some
beneficial
agreements with
principals and
providers from
performing online
shopping
High street
retailers (local)
C
omp
etito
r
To share target
market and
resources with
principals which
leads sometimes to
benefits collision.
Only if High Street
retailers are not
available in online
market.
Commu
nity
sphere
Male Guardians
(local)
Byst
ande
r
To have no direct
involvement in
online shopping but
have a direct
influence on the
Actor’s decision
about online
shopping
(KACST)
(CITC)
(Saudi
NIC)(local)
Legi
slato
rs
To set out law, rules,
regulations,
procedures, and
bureaucracies
governing online
shopping in Saudi
Arabia
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Table 2: Saudi female consumers’ valuation framing.
Saudi Female Consumers (Actors)
Subsistence New frontier to enjoy shopping
Classification suitable for a gender-segregated
society
Territoriality Convenience ( worldwide shopping
from home)
Temporality Shopping 24/7 is suitable for all
segments of female consumers
Learning (usability issues) capable of learning
online shopping processes
Play Depending on design, can be quite
amusing process
Protection Security, confidentiality, privacy ,
and safe shopping
Exploitation Limited needs to visit traditional
shops
Association Collective and masculine society,
quite associated with family and
male guardian’s opinions
Interaction Enable interaction with Arabic
speaking female shopping
assistant(s) and be aware of female
social interaction preferences in a
gender-segregated society
The second example of stakeholder’s valuation
framing exercise is e-shops or online retailers. Table
3 illustrates the valuation of e-shops or online
retailers:
The third example of stakeholder’s valuation
framing exercise is high street shops or traditional
retailers. Table 4 illustrates the valuation of high
street shops or traditional retailers:
The fourth example of stakeholder’s valuation
framing exercise is the bystander or male-guardian
in this context. Table 5 illustrates the valuation of
male guardians:
Each category in the valuation framing is treated as a
separate building block, capable of being analysed in
its own terms without reference to the other systems.
Distinct definitions of each category have been made
which will help a user of the method in constructing
a proposer description of the various types of
valuations.
Table 3: online retailers’ valuation framing.
Online retailers
Subsistence Business profitability dependent on
adoption of e-shopping
Classification Such a target market in gender-
segregated society and cultural
constrains is a niche for successful
business opportunities
Territoriality global e-shops enables international
orders
Temporality Flexible timing allowing consumers
to shop 24/7
Learning Usability issues is online retailers
(website designers) responsibility
Play Amusing and engaging websites is
online retailers (website designers)
responsibility, i.e. virtual fitting
rooms
Protection Responsible for creating trustworthy
websites that convey confidential,
secure, and private interaction
Exploitation e-shops are extensions of traditional
shops (replace them)
Association Awareness of the collective and
masculine cultural natures of the
society and influence of family on
individuals (female consumers)
decisions
Interaction Responsible for providing websites
that can establish rapport with clients
through clear lines of trust and
sufficient customer relationships
managements
Table 4: High street shops valuation framing.
High street retailers
Subsistence Loss of clients means loss of
business
Classification No significant change
Territoriality e-shops is more convenient than
visiting shops especially within
existing environmental and cultural
constrains for female consumers
Temporality Restrictions of opening times and
closing for prayers make it easier
for consumers to shop online
Learning Once female consumers become
confident in using e-shops they will
rarely visit h.s. shops again
Play If e-shops provide sufficient
amusement and fun opportunities,
female consumers will not look for
fun else where
Protection Once online shopping conveys safe,
secure, confidential, and private
shopping process. Female
consumers will no longer need to
visit h.s.shops. e-shopping generally
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endanger h.s.shops
Exploitation h.s.shops can open online shops as
extensions of their traditional shops
and save their clients
Association Successful business in Saudi Arabia
is based on family bonds and social
relations
Interaction Cultural issues of interaction in
h.s.shops and the fact that sales
people are males creates constraints
in shopping which can be replaced
sufficiently with effective e-shops
designs
Table 5: Male-guardian’s valuation framing.
Male-guardian
Subsistence From a provider perspective; easier
way to spend more money
Classification Satisfy gender-segregated society
norms
Territoriality Convenience as no need to take
female to h.s.shops and save long
waiting hours
Temporality Convenience as no waiting for
opening times is required
Learning As long as it is easy and reliable for
female consumers to use them
Play Joyful websites encourages using it.
keeping in mind socio-cultural
norms of joy within a society
Protection Ensure that it does not contain any
inappropriate content, safe, secure,
confidential, and private.
Exploitation Limited need to visit traditional
shops
Association Ensure that is does not endanger
family bonds and enable group
shopping or family e-shopping
facilities
Interaction Ensure that it does not endanger
socio-cultural interaction norms
within a society
4 DISCUSSION
Studies show that majority of the software
development projects fail because of lack of
understanding the requirements clearly and non-
involvement of key stakeholders. For the successful
software product to be developed it is important to
identify relevant stakeholders and involve them
during requirements elicitation process. Conflicts in
requirements of different stakeholders are bound to
happen. These conflicts have to be negotiated and
balanced in order to develop a competitive product.
This paper has clarified that multicultural
stakeholders will more likely have different
perspectives on the features and design decisions on
the product. Also the female consumers’ decision of
adopting e-commerce applications is influenced by
stakeholders roles and responsibilities, for instance
the male guardian’s perception of e-commerce
applications - whether he accepts the adoption or
rejects it - will influence her decision. Also, the
facilities provided by the financial institutions will
affect the female consumers’ decision (as in
providing other payment options than credit cards
payment since people in Saudi Arabia are not
encouraged to use credit cards due to religious
reasons which prohibits them to get involved in
financial transactions that include interest fees. this
indicates the need to provide other payment options
by financial institutions). Also, the sufficiency of the
shipment and delivery companies has a major
influence on the female consumers’ decision in
terms of their commitment to deliver the items
punctually, conditions of items...etc.
The online retailers’ website presentation and
services can be categorised as the most important
factor in the online shopping mechanism as it
facilitates the environment which enables the female
consumer to carry out the whole process of
purchasing online. It provides the look, feel, and
presence of shopping without the physical need to
carry out the action. It is also essential to mention
the role of Internet service providers and the quality
of the connection they provide which is reflected on
the online shopping process sufficiency and
accuracy. While the high street shops are
competitors of online retailers in terms of services,
prices, offers, display, quality, services etc. They
will probably be influenced negatively by the
introduction of such a product.
5 CONCLUSIONS
This paper provides analysis of the cultural impact
on the responses of each of the stakeholders
involved in the development of e-commerce
applications targeting female consumers in Saudi
Arabia. The information provided in this paper will
enable analysts and designers to point out some
requirements that should be considered while
designing online shopping applications targeting the
Saudi female market.
According to the theoretical analysis implemented
in the paper it is found that introducing e-commerce
applications to the Saudi female market is not
enough for her to adopt and use these applications.
This decision is made in cooperation with other
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stakeholders after examining the suitability if these
applications to the cultural and moral beliefs of the
region. Failing to consider these cultural influences
in the product preparation will probably result in
failing the adoption and use of these applications.
Future work in this regard aims to implement
empirical investigations towards the influence of
cultural factors on the design and adoption of e-
commerce applications in Saudi Arabia. This
requires modelling the social reality of e-commerce
in Saudi Arabia as well as the mental models of the
users (Saudi female consumers). Also identifying the
socio-cultural norms and incorporating them in the
design guidelines of these applications via
implementing the Semantic Analysis Method (SAM)
and Norm Analysis Method (NAM) offered by the
organisational semiotics analysis discipline.
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CULTURES, ROLES, AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF STAKEHOLDERS IN MULTICULTURAL REQUIREMENTS
ENGINEERING - Designing e-Commerce for Female Market in Saudi Arabia
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