Ecommerce in KSA

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Electronic Commerce in the

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Mutlaq B. Al-OtaibiRasheed M. Al-Zahrani

[email protected] Systems Department

College of Computer and Information SciencesKing Saud University

Abstract

Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) is a challenging field due to

the many aspects it involves. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), E-

Commerce adoption is very slow due to the existing barriers, e.g.

immature complementary services and numerous possible threats. There

has been a lot of interest in overcoming such barriers, both in the

government and private sectors. A number of conferences, seminars, and

workshops were organized by Ministry of Commerce and other private

and government bodies to address different E-Commerce issues. This

research is one of the first scientific studies of local E-Commerce. It

assess the existing practices and the major barriers and challenges

encountered by Saudi businesses in facilitating E-Commerce

technologies. Our investigation includes both technical and organizational

issues. However, due to the size of the problem, emphasis is put on

evaluating technical solutions and their providers in addition to the

overall impact of E-Commerce on organizations.

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1 Introduction

The success of the World Wide Web (WWW) and its applications

introduced a mixture of interrelated terms in the business context, e.g. E-

Business, E-Marketplace, E-Wallet, E-Mail, and E-Commerce. Many

researchers have attempted to define E-Commerce. By focusing on

business transactions, E-Commerce considers the manner in which

business transactions take place via different sets of information

technology (IT) mechanisms [BOK2000], and [SHA2000] .

From a customer-vendor relationship perspective, E-Commerce

intends essentially to leverage the relationship between customers and

vendors [SIM2000]. In many cases, customers tend to search in one

location for their needs, and negotiate different vendors. Vendors need to

understand the customers’ behaviors in order to enhance their decision

making process[SIM2000], and [MAR2000]. E-Commerce describes the

buying and selling of products, services, and information in a virtual

environment [TUR2000].

1.1 E-Commerce Adoption

Many organizations adopt E-Commerce as a response to several

business drivers [TUR2000]. In many cases, they are looking either for

competitive advantages, expanding marketplace, or adding more

conveniences to their business [LAK2000]. Nowadays, there are many

successful E-Commerce adoptions. The rapid changes in the political and

technical fields are creating new business environments, in which E-

Commerce is considered a business carrier [LAK2000].

E-Commerce has many advantages. It lowers telecommunications

cost, and reduces inventories overhead. Furthermore, it enables customers

to shop (any where/any time) with more choices, and enables more

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individuals to work at home, and to do less traveling for shopping,

resulting in less traffic on the roads, and lower air pollution [TUR2000].

E-Commerce also expands the marketplace to national and

international markets [MAR2000], allows for customization of products

and services which provides competitive advantage to its implementers

[TUR2000], provides consumers with less expensive products and

services by allowing them to shop in many places and conduct quick

comparisons [GUT2000], facilitates competition, which results in

substantial discounts [TUR2000], and enables people in developing

countries to enjoy products and services that are otherwise not available

to them [TUR2000].

It is strongly believed that E-Commerce could drive the global

economic forces for the current century [RET2000]. Kreplin et al

[KRE2000] have identified “Reality” and “Virtuality” terms; these terms

distinguish traditional commerce from Electronic Commerce. E-

Commerce is based on a virtual (digital) business process with a virtual

agent, and virtual product. Traditional commerce is a physical business

process with respect to the three components.

Turban et al [TUR2000] presents a three dimensional model to

illustrate electronic commerce virtuality by means of working in a digital

environment. Our presentation shown in Figure 1 offers a simplified

distinction between traditional commerce and electronic commerce.

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PureTraditionalCommerce

PureElectronicCommerce

VirtualPhysical

Virtual

Physical

Process

Pro

duct

Virtual

Physical

Age

nt

MixedElectronicCommerce

MixedTraditionalCommerce

Figure 1 Traditional Commerce vs. E-Commerce (Adapted from [TUR

2000]).

1.2 Characteristics of KSA

According to the Ministry of Commerce (MoC), the number of

internet users in KSA is rapidly growing. The growth ratio was 122% in

2000. Further more KSA is classified as the biggest Personnel Computer

(PC) market in the Arabic world, and it is one of the biggest growing

markets in the world. The number of purchased PCs reached 223,187 in

year 2000 [MOC2001]. MoC has established a dedicated committee for

E-Commerce. This committee is fully responsible to deal with E-

Commerce requirements. It aims at preparing for the creation of suitable

environment for E-Commerce to serve the global economy [MOC2001].

Saudi businessmen, in coordination with MoC, created an E-

Commerce consultation team to connect different Saudi businesses

together, and to provide proposals and consultations in the E-Commerce

field [MOC2001].

Despite the slowness of deploying E-Commerce in KSA, many

local advantages can be utilized to obtain a leading position in the E-

Commerce world. These include geographical location, free economic

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strategy, communication infrastructure, and population formation

[COC2002]:

Population growth: Population growth in KSA reached 3.7%

yearly. The rapid growth is tied with demands on products

and services.

Basic economic elements: The basic elements of economy

are available in KSA including political stability, free

economic strategy, link with other international economies,

private ownership motivation and communication

infrastructure.

Human resources availability: The number of Saudi

professionals is not huge, but it is enough to start E-

Commerce. More than 50 % of Saudis are below 25. This

generation can be utilized to advocate IT and E-Commerce.

Social environment suitability: many religious and social

issues in the Saudi community motivate the tendency

towards electronic work, especially for women.

Wide spread usage of PC in all domains of life.

Telecommunication growth: The growth of

telecommunications in KSA is remarkable.

E-Commerce surveys and statistics in KSA are lacking. It is

important to evaluate the current status of E-Commerce and to provide

recommendations for the future. It is essential to assess the progress made

in the last few years. Such an assessment will not only disclose the

current challenges, weakness and achievements, but will also offer an

accurate picture of our position and motivate solutions for our inherent

problems and recommendations to push E-Commerce forward in the right

direction. This study reveals threats and opportunities that should be

seriously addressed by Saudi organizations, if they are to survive the

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consequences of globalization and open markets.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2

explains the objectives and style of this research. Section 3 describes out

study tool’s design. Then, section 4 offers high level results about our

sample. Section 5 analyses the detailed results of our survey and section 6

attempts to present some correlations and interesting results discovered

by applying some advanced analysis tools. Section 7 is summarizes the

paper and provides future research dimensions in this domain.

2 Research Methodology

The main objective of our research is to assess the current status of

E-Commerce in KSA. This assessment includes the following items:

(1) Evaluating E-Commerce contributions in serving

organizations including:

a) Satisfying strategy.

b) Economics of scale.

c) Customer satisfaction.

d) Performance measurements within organization.

(2) Evaluating E-Commerce solution providers’ role in serving

organizations.

(3) Evaluating the impact of complementary services.

(4) Evaluating adoption of modern technologies.

(5) Evaluating adherence to standards.

(6) Examining possible threats facing organization due to E-

Commerce adoption.

(7) Measuring the tendency of Saudi organizations to adopt new

technologies (e.g. agents, components) and planning future

extensions.

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In order to achieve the above objectives, our research requires

information on technological and organizational aspects of organizations.

Some aspects may be acquired from the web portals. However, there are

other technology and business questions that can only be answered by the

relevant people in an organization.

Our assessment is based on a descriptive survey as a research

methodology. Acquired data is organized by Microsoft access and

presented systematically to draw valid and accurate conclusions. For

analysis, SPSS is used. Microsoft excel is also used to overcome some

drawbacks of SPSS.

Our research focuses on large organizations (the first to embark

and use E-Commerce technologies). Chamber of Commerce and Industry

in Riyadh listed the top 100 Saudi companies 2001 [TOP2001] ranked

according to their assets. We assess joint stock companies, government

owned companies, and limited liability companies as our minimal

society. We exclude governmental organizations. We covered 91

organizations located in three KSA areas (Riyadh area, western area, and

eastern area).

3 Study tool design

This study is based on a data capturing tool (questionnaire), which

is designed for surveying Saudi organizations. This section addresses the

design approach of this tool. Our questionnaire consists of many

clustering variables and dimensions. The first six questions are general

questions about surveyed organizations and they are variables that cluster

organizations into different groups. The remaining questions represent

other E-Commerce dimensions. The questionnaire design has been

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judged by three specialists. It was amended and adjusted to achieve a

more consistent design. A first version was distributed to some 15

organizations. Feedback received from those organizations was used to

further improve our design.

3.1 Clustering variables

The basic variables in this study are used for analysis purposes.

They cluster the study sample based on the date of organization

establishment, its legal status, nature of business, overall annual budget,

and IT department investment in relation to its overall annual budget, and

number of PCs in the organization. They provide an overview of

organizations size, business, and IT relevance.

3.2 E-Commerce dimensions

E-Commerce related questions compose the core dimensions of

this study. These dimensions are business strategy, E-Commerce benefits

for the organization, E-Commerce solution providers, E-Commerce

complementary services, E-Commerce threats, modern technologies, and

standards.

3.2.1 Business strategy dimension

Business strategy dimension is presented by two questions. The

first question asks about E-Commerce importance in an organization.

Actually, this question points to the actual use of E-Commerce, i.e.

whether it used for actual business or just for advertising? Another asks

about business strategy status. It can be complemented with previous one

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that asks about organization’s planning period. This is used as a double

checking on business strategy to avoid false answers.

Another question in business strategy dimension asks about

coupling with E-Commerce practice and depends on the existence of a

business strategy. Another dependent question asks about the causes of E-

Commerce not being coupled with business strategy.

3.2.2 E-Commerce benefits’ dimension

E-Commerce benefits are assessed through many elements, such as

satisfying customer, declining inventory overhead, speeding up

transaction processing, reducing transaction cost, increasing Return-On-

Investment (ROI), market share growth, market availability, and reducing

the need for manpower.

3.2.3 E-Commerce solution providers’ dimension

Questions in this dimension evaluate E-Commerce solution

providers’ (ECSP) quality of services, such as maintenance, bandwidth,

hosting, trust, security, software quality and effectiveness, network

reliability, hardware quality, training level, and manpower quality.

Another one asks to judge those services in relation to their cost.

3.2.4 Complementary services’ dimension

Here, we evaluate the impact of complementary services on E-

Commerce adoption in the organization. These services include

unreliability of postal and delivery services, absence of governmental

regulations, absence of support from security organizations, lack of

financial organizations involvement, and absence of governmental

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infrastructure to support e-Commerce.

3.2.5 E-Commerce threats’ dimension

E-Commerce threat evaluation consists of 10 elements. These are

financial fraud, malicious site misquoting as legitimate site, intellectual

property threats, credit card information disclosures, personal information

threats, sites hacking (content), applications hacking (software), client

machines hacking (systems), and communications hacking.

3.2.6 Modern technologies’ dimension

Two questions represent modern technologies dimension, each of

which consists of 5 elements. The first question evaluates awareness

about modern technologies. These technologies include agents,

mediators, CORBA, ontology, etc. The second evaluates the relevance of

each of these technologies to the organization, even if it is not using them

right now.

3.2.7 Standards dimension

Three questions represent standards dimension. The first asks about

importance of standards. The second asks about the type of standards

used. The third question asks about activities that are standardized within

the organization.

4 Results overview

In this section, summarized results are presented together with

illustrations and discussions of those results. Due to space limitations,

only partial results are offered in this paper. Full details can be obtained

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from [ALO2003]. Descriptive analysis offers summary statistics on

several dimensions in a single table. Descriptive analysis computes

sample size, mean, minimum, maximum, standard deviation, etc. Table 1

presents statistics on Saudi organizations survey. Some dimensions have

sub-dimensions, e.g. E-Commerce Solution Providers. Findings presented

in the remainder of the paper focus on E-Commerce issues. This should

not undermine other results that are not strongly highlighted.

Descriptive Statistics

31 14 40 28.00 6.02

17 12 50 29.94 11.80

17 9 44 26.35 10.55

31 9 41 29.84 5.91

32 10 25 16.75 3.95

91 5 25 11.95 4.96

87 5 25 15.10 5.08

16

E-Commerce benefits

ECSP effectiveness

ECSP cost

E-Commerce threats

Complementry services

Technologies awareness

Technologies relevancy

Valid N (listwise)

N MIN MAX MeanStd.

Deviation

Table 1 – Dimensions statistics for Saudi organizations survey.

Looking at minimum, maximum, mean, and standard deviation

values, it is possible to initially evaluate such dimensions. Mean of E-

Commerce benefits is 28 in the range of (8 – 40) which is equivalent to

70 %. The standard deviation is 6.02, which is relatively acceptable.

Standard deviation presents the amount in which values vary from their

mean. In this case, values vary in the range of 6 from 28. Thus, E-

Commerce is beneficial.

Finding # 1 E-Commerce is beneficial for Saudi businesses.

The mean value of E-Commerce solution provider’s (ECSP)

effectiveness is 30 in the range of (1 – 50). This is equivalent to 60 %.

Standard deviation is 12 and it is considered very high. Values vary so

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much from their mean. Thus, E-Commerce Solution Providers provide

reasonable services. In addition to this, ECSPs quality of service vary

greatly from one provider to the other.

The ECSPs’ cost dimension had a mean value of 26.35 in range of

(10-50) which is 53 %, but with a high standard deviation of 11. This

means that their cost is affordable and when cost is related to the quality

of service, it is regarded reasonable.

Finding # 2 E-Commerce Solution providers effectiveness is

acceptable and their cost is reasonable in

comparison with their quality of services.

The mean value of E-Commerce threats is 30 in the range of (9-45)

that is equivalent to 70 %, with a standard deviation 5.91. This deviation

means that most Saudi organizations agree on the threats of E-Commerce.

finding # 3 E-Commerce possible threats facing Saudi E-

Commerce practices are numerous and

dangerous.

E-Commerce Complementary Services’ impact resulted in a mean

value of 17 in the range of (5- 25) that is equivalent to 70 %, with 3.94

standard deviation which is relatively acceptable.

Finding # 4 E-Commerce complementary services in KSA

are immature and they negatively affect

tendency towards E-Commerce adoption or limit

its actual implementation.

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Modern Technologies awareness in Saudi organizations is limited.

The mean value is 12 in the range of (5-25), which is 48%, with a

standard deviation of 4.96, which is relatively high. There is definitely no

wide-spread adoption of such technologies. However, their relevance to

Saudi organizations was evaluated positively, having a mean value 15.10

in the same range (5-25), which is equivalent to 60 %, with standard

deviation 5.08.

finding # 5 E-Commerce modern technologies have

considerable relevance to Saudi businesses even

though they are not widely adopted.

5 Frequency analysis

The Frequency analysis provides statistics and graphical displays

that are useful for describing many types of dimensions and variables.

Immediate indications can be realized form a quick look at frequency

figures. Only partial results and discussions are presented in this paper.

Further details can be obtained from [ALO2003].

5.1 Sample variables

As characteristics of surveyed organizations, clustering variables

differentiate between our organizations sample. It is obvious that the

majority of our sample companies are established between 1960 and

1990, with above 100 million overall annual budgets, which invest more

than 20 % of their overall annual budget on IT, which have between 100

and 500 PCs. Most of the organizations in the sample are large companies

with huge IT investment.

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Additionally, the majority of organizations in our sample have

organizational web sites (93.4 %). As a core objective of our research, we

found that E-Commerce is not widely adopted. Most of the Saudi

organizations did not adopt E-Commerce (67 %). The prime barriers of

E-Commerce adoption will be discussed in the coming sections.

Finding # 6 67 % of Saudi organizations do not adopt E-

Commerce.

Table 2 summaries the details of the study sample in this survey.

The mode value is the most frequently occurring (dominant) value. If

several values share the greatest frequency of occurrence, each of them

can be regarded as a mode. For example, companies established between

1960 and 1999 are 63.7%, which is a mode since it is the highest value.

Only 11% of them were established before 1960 and 25% were

established after 1990.

Variable Mode Percentage

Date of organization establishment Between 1960 - 1999 63.7 %

Overall annual budget Above 100 million 38.5 %

IT budget with overall budget > 20 % 31.9 %

Legal status Limited liability 53.8 %

Business nature Services 45.1 %

Number of PCs Between 100 and 500 28.6 %

Having web site Have a web site 93.4 %

E-Commerce adoption Do not adopt 67 %

Table 2 - Summary of the study sample.

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5.2 E-Commerce and business strategy

dimension

E-Commerce and business strategy issues are summaries Table 3.

Element Mode Percentage

E-Commerce importance Important 79 % a

Status of business strategy Well-known to all members 53 %

Planning period Five years 48 %

E-Commerce coupling Partial coupling 55 %

Table 3 - Summary of business strategy dimension.

Finding # 7 E-Commerce is important for Saudi business (79

%). But its coupling with business strategy is

partial (55 %).

5.3 E-Commerce benefits dimension

Table 4 summaries the details of E-Commerce benefits in this

survey. Except increasing ROI, other benefits of E-Commerce were

tangible and measurable in the majority of organizations.

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Satisfying customers Effective 65 % a

Declining inventory overhead Effective 64 % a

Speeding transaction processing Effective 48 % a

Reducing transaction cost Effective 61 % a

Increasing ROI Sufficient 48 %

Market share growth Effective 55 % a

Market availability Effective 55 % a

Reduce the need for manpower Sufficient 35 %

Table 4 - Summary of E-Commerce benefits dimension.

5.4 E-Commerce Solution Providers dimension

Details of E-Commerce Solution Providers (ECSP) effectiveness

are presented Table 5.


Maintenance quality Sufficient 79 % a

Bandwidth quality Strong 64 % a

Hosting quality Strong 61 % a

Trust quality Strong 61 % a

Security quality Sufficient 62 % a

Software quality and effectiveness Very strong 59 % a

Network reliability Strong 92 % a

Hardware quality Very strong 50 %

Training level Strong 53 % a

Manpower quality Strong 65 % a

Table 5 - Summary of ECSP effectiveness.

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Figures shown in Table 5 affirm the conclusion reached earlier that

E-Commerce Solution providers effectiveness is acceptable and their cost

is reasonable in comparison with their quality of services.

5.5 Complementary services dimension

Table 6 summaries the details of the impact of E-Commerce

complementary services on E-Commerce adoption in Saudi

organizations. As illustrated, two thirds of the organizations believe that

itemized factors have middle impact on their E-Commerce adoption

decision, except lack of financial bodies involvement in supporting

organizations. Many financial issues needed for E-Commerce (e.g.

linkage between banks and ISPs to allow direct debit/credit of accounts)

are not yet formalized in KSA.


Lack of postal and delivery service Middle impact 63 %

Absence of governmental regulations Middle impact 69 %

Absence of policing support Middle impact 63 %

Lack of financial organizations involvement High impact 58 %

Absence of E-Commerce infrastructure Middle impact 66 %

Table 6 - Summary of E-Commerce complementary services.

5.6 E-Commerce threats dimension

E-Commerce threats- related aspects are listed in Table 7.

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Financial fraud Middle dangerous 64 % a

Malicious misquoting Middle dangerous 73 % a

Intellectual property threats Middle dangerous 58 %

Credit card information disclosures Middle dangerous 48 % a

Personal information threats Middle dangerous 42 %

Site hacking Dangerous 55 % a

Application hacking Middle dangerous 81 % a

Client machines hacking Less dangerous 50 % a

Communication hacking Middle dangerous 74 % a

Table 7 - Summary of E-Commerce threats evaluation.

Site hacking is seen by 55% of the community as a dangerous

threat. In fact this is the most dominating type of IT crimes in the recent

years in KSA, see [ALG2002]. Except client machine hacking which is

considered less dangerous by the majority of organizations, other aspects

are classified as middle dangerous. This implies that Saudi organizations

do not see E-Commerce as a safe practice. This is an alarming result, and

it should trigger immediate actions by both government and private sector

authorities involved in E-Commerce support. In particular, there is a

serious need for legislations and law enforcement policies from the

government, while ECSPs should provide more secure services and

should invest in community awareness programs for this purpose

[ALG2002].

Finding # 8 The majority of Saudi organizations have real

concerns about the security of E-Commerce.

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5.7 Standards dimension

Table 8 summaries the details of the standards dimension in our

survey. The three questions evaluating this dimension reflect high

maturity with respect to community awareness of the role on standards in

IT.


Standards importance Important 96.70 %

Type of standards International standards 59.34 %

Standardized activities Data interchange 65.93 %

Table 8 - Summary of E-Commerce standards evaluation.

Finding # 9 Standards are regarded important by almost

all Saudi organizations, especially international

standards in data interchange and system

communication and interoperation.

5.8 Modern technologies dimension

Two questions in our survey evaluate the importance and the

relevance of modern technologies that serve E-Commerce. Table 9

summaries the results of those technologies. It is clear that a large number

of organizations did not hear about mediators and ontology. Agents,

software components and distributed object technologies are known but

never used in the majority of Saudi organizations. The mode value

offered in this summary does not give the whole picture. For example,

33% of the sample know about agents, but never use them. 23% others

never know about this technology. The total is 55%. Similar figures exist

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for other technologies. Full details are available in [ALO2003].


Agents awareness Know about it, but never use it 33 %

Components awareness Know about it, but never use it 36 %

Ontology awareness First time hearing about it 57 %

Mediators awareness First time hearing about it 40 %

Know about it, but never use it 31 %Distributed object

commuting awareness Plan to adopt it 31 %

Agents relevancy Middle relevant 29 %

Components relevancy Middle relevant 30 %

Ontology relevancy Irrelevant 29 %

Mediators relevancy Middle relevant 37 %

Distributed object

commuting relevancy

Middle relevant 32 %

Table 9 - Summary of modern technologies dimension.

Additionally, agents technology has an acceptable relevance to

Saudi businesses. 29% say it is middle relevant, 15% say it is relevant

and 24% believe it is less relevant. Components, mediators and

distributed object technologies received a similar evaluation. Ontology,

on the other hand, was not seen as a relevant technology by majority of

organizations.

Those figures mean that Saudi organizations are not well aware

about new technological trends. In fact, this also can be seen an indication

that E-Commerce is not being taken seriously, because serious

organizations try to adopt up-to-date facilities to enhance their E-

Commerce practices.

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Finding # 10 Saudi organizations are not well aware about

new technological trends in E-Commerce.

6 Crosstabs and Chi-Square test analysis

In this section, we present results obtained by correlating some

variables in our survey. Due to space limitations, only partial results are

given here. In fact, discovering the relevance of relations between the

large number of variables in this study is a time consuming and

continuing task. The Crosstabs analysis forms two-way and multi-way

tables and provides a variety of tests and measures of association for two-

way tables. The structure of the table and whether categories are ordered

determine what test or measure to use.

Crosstabs’ statistics and measures of association are computed for

two-way tables only. When specifying a row, a column, and a layer factor

(control variable), the Crosstabs analysis forms one panel of associated

statistics and measures for each value of the layer factor (or a

combination of values for two or more control variables).

Chi-Square tests the hypothesis that the row and column variables

are independent, without indicating strength or direction of the

relationship. We use Pearson chi-square in our evaluation.

6.1 E-Commerce adoption

Crosstabs analysis and Chi-Square test are performed for E-

Commerce adoption and provide a variety of tests and measures of

association with adopted organizations characteristics, e.g. legal status,

business nature.

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6.1.1 Legal status

Chi-Square test for E-Commerce adoption and legal status value is

(0.052). This means that here is no statistical significant relation between

E-Commerce adoption and organizations legal status. Crosstabs table for

E-Commerce adoption and legal status is illustrated in [ALO2003]. It

shows that limited liability companies form the majority in adopting E-

Commerce where 14 out of 49 limited liability companies adopted E-

Commerce. But, in comparison with those who did not adopt E-

Commerce, joint stock companies are more advancing in this domain

where 12 out 23 adopted E-Commerce.

Finding # 11 Saudi joint-stock companies are more advancing

in E-Commerce adoption than other types of

companies.

6.1.2 Business nature

Chi-Square test for E-Commerce adoption and business nature

value is (0.415). So, there is no statistical significant relation between E-

Commerce adoption and business nature. Services companies are

adopting E-Commerce more than other types of companies, since 12

services companies out of 40 adopted E-Commerce. But, in the banking

industry, 7 banks adopted E-Commerce out of 12, which makes banks

more likely to adopt E-Commerce in comparison with other industries.

Finding # 12 Saudi banks are more likely adopting E-

Commerce than other Saudi organizations.

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In fact, our study illustrates that there is no relationship between

various clustering variables of organizations and their tendency towards

E-Commerce adoption.

6.2 E-Commerce importance

Crosstabs analysis and Chi-Square tests are also performed for E-

Commerce importance to provide a variety of tests and measures of

associations with organizations characteristics, e.g. overall annual budget.

We tested these variables, without indicating strength or direction of the

relationship.

6.2.1 Overall annual budget

Chi-Square test for E-Commerce importance and organization

overall budget value is (0.015). We are 95 % confident that the relation

between E-Commerce importance and organization overall annual budget

has a statistical significance.

Finding # 13 There is a statistically significant relationship

between E-Commerce importance and

organizations budget at the (0.05) level. E-

Commerce importance increases when the

budget increases.

6.2.2 Planning period

Chi-Square test for E-Commerce importance and planning period

value is (0.001). Consequently, we are 99 % sure that the relation

between E-Commerce importance and planning period has a statistical

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significance. Crosstabs table for E-Commerce importance and planning

period shows that E-Commerce is important for organizations that plan

for five or more years [ALO2003].

7 Conclusion and further work

7.1 Conclusion

In KSA, IT and communication growth are substantial. Technology

effectiveness is essential in E-Commerce success. However, human,

economic, and other organizational issues must be taken into account as

well. In this study, we evaluated the current status of E-Commerce in

KSA.

E-Commerce is very important for Saudi corporations, but is less

important for middle size and small companies. Most Saudi organizations

that have EDI and E-Commerce use international standards, but only few

have adopted E-Commerce. However, E-Commerce adoption is

influenced by immature complementary services and numerous possible

threats. E-Commerce modern technologies are not widely adopted, even

though they are highly relevant to Saudi businesses. Saudi E-Commerce

Solution Providers are not effective in the domain, but their cost is

reasonable in comparison with their quality of service.

The evaluation of current status reveals opportunities that should

be seriously tackled by Saudi organizations, if they are to survive the

consequences of globalization and open markets. There should be an

immediate implementation of a governmental infrastructure to support E-

Commerce, e.g. addressing, postal and delivery services, standards,

regulations, legislations, etc. This requires more privatization of some

governmental organizations and more private sector involvement in E-

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Commerce.

7.2 Further work

As mentioned earlier, our work in [ALO2003] has addressed other

issues not covered in this paper. Performing advanced analysis on the

data captured in that research after integrating it with the results reached

in this paper will definitely yield interesting results.

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