E-commerce Adoption in Saudi Arabia: An Evaluation of Commercial Organizatios' Web Sites

Information Technology (IT) is rapidly growing in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). PC sales and Internet growth is the highest in the region [1, 2]. However, it is generally believed that e-Commerce practices are not progressing at the same speed. To judge this, Saudi web practices need to be evaluated. This study is one of the first scientific studies of Saudi commercial web sites by analyzing the practices and the characteristics of those sites. It measures the tendency of Saudi organizations towards eCommerce. Our investigation considers the marketing, human interaction, knowledge support and e-Commerce dimensions within those sites. Today’s Saudi e-Commerce practices are generally immature, where most of the previous dimensions are either missing or very weak. This paper offers an insight into the status of e-Commerce in Saudi Arabia. Despite the fact that our survey is not exhaustive, we claim that the results reached in this paper reflect -to a large extentthe current situation, and could be used by responsible authorities to find means to encourage those practices and overcome weaknesses and barriers.