Attracting Customer in Saudi Arabia to Buy from Your Business Online

Abstract

This paper reports on an exploration of the factors that attract consumers to buy online in Saudi Arabia. Few companies in that country have enabled business sites, but most of them are keen to present product information on their sites rather than have an online sales process. According to the latest report was issued in 2010 from the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) in Saudi Arabia, there are only 8% of businesses have online purchase channel; in contrast 54% of companies have websites only to present products. Accordingly, new research has been conducted to explore the attraction of customers in Saudi Arabia to buy from businesses online. This will assist the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector, which represents 90% of companies in Saudi Arabia, to increase communication channels with its customers electronically. A quantitative survey was conducted on a random sample of 381 consumer participants from Saudi Arabia who were interested to buy online to see what factors would attract them to online shopping. Several factors emerged as attracting factors which were divided into organizational, technical, and cultural factors.