The gaps in e-commerce in Saudi Arabia

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The invention of e-commerce and e- shopping was to help create opportunities to do business globally. Consumers of various goods and services are found everywhere across the globe and it is extremely difficult to reach them other than through online business. Through e-commerce a lot of barriers have been eliminated which include among others the transaction inefficiencies and cost reduction. It is also important to online shopping has given a better platform for both businessmen and their consumers to do business cross culturally and cross nationality. Saudi Arabia is considered the most dynamic in online business in the middle east since its population growth rate has reached 3% in 10 years.This paper seeks to look the knowledge gaps that exist in e-commerce in Saudi Arabia.

A lot of studies have been conducted to establish the challenges of online business in Saudi Arabia. It was noted that lack of clear regulations governing e-commerce, absence of proper legislative agenda are primary reasons for e-commerce doing badly. The rules are meant to protect the rights businessmen and lack of them make the parties very vulnerable and in the end compromises e-commerce. (Alfuraih, 2008).until 2005,Saudi Arabia had domestic mailing system where individuals were expected to subscribe inorder for them to have a mailbox in the post office. Alfuraih, 2008).

The number of people who have access to internet have significantly increased since a paltry less than three million people worldwide could access the internet in 1991 compared to 250 million in 1999.out of these,63 million participated in online sopping. The question then begs, how many people engaged in online business in Saudi Arabia? Even though there was a remarkable increase in the number of people attempting to do online business, a good percentage never completed their transactions. Customer retaining is also a big challenge taking into account that acquiring new customers could be very expensive compared to retaining the ones you already have. Civilized customers demand that their needs must be met immediately, for free and perfectly. This is because most of them are empowered and can make their own decision of their preferred choices. The existence of both online and an offline mode of doing business complicates the online shopping even further. (Crego and Schiffrin 1995).

The other most obvious gap is how to win the trust of customers. Everyone is bound to doubt and think that others may behave opportunistically. It is as a result of the customer believing that the vendor will provide him with what he needs that will create an environment for online business to thrive. (Geffen 2003).if the vendor creates the slightest room for the customer to doubt their ability to engage in business then it is most certainly bad for e-commerce. (Chiu 2009)

The quality of the website also has a lot of implication on online business. It actually forms the basis of trust. A website which is of high quality is most likely to win the confidence of her prospective customers. (Myerson et al. 1996).this is a serious gap since not all websites will be of the same high standard that many customers expect to see.

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