The enablers and disablers of e-commerce: Consumers' perspectives

Abstract

The availability and continued growth of Internet technologies (IT) have created great opportunities for users all over the globe to benefit from these services and use them in a variety of different ways. The use of IT to conduct business online is known as Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce). While developed countries have harnessed and adopted ECommerce, developing countries are not yet fully adapted to its adoption. The aim of this study is to investigate the main factors that play a role in the adoption of E-Commerce from a consumer's perceptive and, hence, develop a framework that conceptualises the influential factors (enablers and disablers) of E-Commerce. A 'grounded theory' methodology was used to collect and analyse the data and develop the proposed framework. Thus, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Saudi residents to elicit their opinions about E-Commerce enablers and disablers in Saudi Arabia. The findings of the study suggest that the factors that have the most significant impact on the adoption of E-Commerce in Saudi Arabia are security, fraud and hacking, trust, cyber-law, awareness and perceived usefulness, postal services, government e-readiness, resistance to change, the presence of commercial electronic websites, cost, tangibility, warranty, trial and experience.