Assessing eCommerce adoption in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This work presents the outcome of a study carried out to assess the development of electronic commerce in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The main aim of this work is to study the status of e-commerce in the KSA and assess the issues affecting its growth from both consumers and Small Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) point views. Consequently, to determine why although the number of Internet subscribers have risen substantially in the last few years, e-commerce has still not reached its full potential. The outcome from analysing the survey results have been used to identify the challenges and barriers facing the development and progress of e-commerce in the KSA. Both consumers and businesses showed that the vast majority of the KSA citizens and business establishments are keen to use online shopping. The conclusions and recommendations drawn from this study can be useful to overcome the obstacles facing the development of e-commerce and improve future e-commerce development in the KSA.

Autorentext

Ph.D candidate - school of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics at Brunel University, west London,UK. She holds a MSc in Information Systems Management,Brunel University,UK, 2007. Her research interests including Adoption of wirless Broadband by Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs), Electronic Commerce, WiMax adoption by SMEs.