A NEW HORIZON BECKONS FOR SAUDI ARABIA IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL AGE OF E-COMMERCE & ON-LINE SHOPPING

Khalid Al-Diri, Dave Hobbs, Rami Qahwaji

2007

Abstract

Electronic commerce is a worldwide phenomenon. Its diffusion has apparently taken different paths in different nations. This is partially because of the significant differing characteristics of national infrastructural and the political and socio-economic environments for e-commerce adoption. The growing use of the Internet in Saudi Arabia provides a developing prospect for e-shopping. Despite the high potential of online shopping in Saudi Arabia, there is still a lack of understanding concerning the subject matter and its potential impact on consumer. This paper is part of larger study, and aims to establish a preliminary assessment, evaluation and understanding of the characteristics of online shopping in Saudi Arabia, based on a sample of 144 Internet users, it explores their information-seeking patterns as well as their motivations and concerns for online shopping. Consumers in Saudi Arabia still lack of trust in the vendors’ websites when utilizing the Internet as a shopping channel. They are mainly concerned about issues related to security and privacy when dealing with online vendors, and also about issues regarding the Saudi Internet network, English language as a dominant Internet language. While the most motivators for Saudis to utilize the online shopping were convenience, product/service not available offline, and the price respectively. We present and discuss our findings, and identify changes that will be required for broader acceptance and diffusion of online shopping in Saudi Arabia.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Al-Diri K., Hobbs D. and Qahwaji R. (2007). A NEW HORIZON BECKONS FOR SAUDI ARABIA IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL AGE OF E-COMMERCE & ON-LINE SHOPPING . In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications - Volume 1: SIGMAP, (ICETE 2007) ISBN 978-989-8111-13-5, pages 352-357. DOI: 10.5220/0002134303520357


in Bibtex Style

@conference{sigmap07,
author={Khalid Al-Diri and Dave Hobbs and Rami Qahwaji},
title={A NEW HORIZON BECKONS FOR SAUDI ARABIA IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL AGE OF E-COMMERCE & ON-LINE SHOPPING},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications - Volume 1: SIGMAP, (ICETE 2007)},
year={2007},
pages={352-357},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002134303520357},
isbn={978-989-8111-13-5},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications - Volume 1: SIGMAP, (ICETE 2007)
TI - A NEW HORIZON BECKONS FOR SAUDI ARABIA IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL AGE OF E-COMMERCE & ON-LINE SHOPPING
SN - 978-989-8111-13-5
AU - Al-Diri K.
AU - Hobbs D.
AU - Qahwaji R.
PY - 2007
SP - 352
EP - 357
DO - 10.5220/0002134303520357