Measuring Customers' Perceptions and Readiness to Accept E-Commerce in Iraq: An Empirical Study

Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) assists organizations to conduct business electronically. This innovation has proved to be one of many significant operational and strategic tools that bring various benefits to business. Many developed countries have actively applied e-commerce successfully since long time ago. In fact e-commerce has become an integral part in many western organizations. However, developing countries, such as IRAQ, are still lagging behind in e-commerce adoption. It is observed that there is a lack of systematic research in e-commerce in the Arabic countries in general, and in Iraq in specific. The purpose of this empirical research is to investigate the perceptions of a sample of Iraqi citizens about e-commerce, and their readiness to do transactions by this mean. The analysis conducted in this work reveals that perceived privacy is the most important variable to the sample surveyed. The study has also identified many barriers (such as e-payment, technological, legal, cultural, trust, etc.) which still impede the adoption of e-commerce in Iraq. The results of this research have many practical implications for policy makers regarding the diffusion and the regulation of e-commerce in Iraq.