E-Commerce and Internet Marketing in Yemen: Opportunities and Challenges

Nowadays, information and communication technologies (ICT) are advancing in a fast speed. It is widely acknowledged that businesses can benefit a lot from the process of applying the advanced technology in both B2B and B2C Marketing. For example, both the behaviors of buying and selling can be completed based on Internet and information system, and this is called e-Commerce. Under this situation, the internet marketing has emerged. It is represented by e-Marketplace which is known as a virtual place. The emergence of e-platforms is helpful for businesses to find more customers and finish the business transactions effectively and efficiently. Despite the limitations and obstacles in adopting and implementing e-commerce, SMEs can still enjoy the benefits of e-commerce. Yemen is still developing the basic elements of an e-commerce infrastructure such as networking, electronic payments and IT-related services, including information technology education and training. Yemen has recently gained higher mobile subscriptions and Internet access penetration rates. The increased use and popularity of mobile phones in Yemen has opened the door to large-scale introduction of e-commerce. Due to the high penetration rate and infrastructure construction, Yemen has good potential to apply ICT and e-commerce. However, Yemeni e-commerce must overcome the lack of experience and skills such as ICT and e-commerce, the concentration of ICTs in urban areas, and the shortage of information technology personnel and facilities. The document suggests that effective e-commerce adoption and implementation should be conducted under carefully designed national ICT and e-commerce development plans and guidelines. Keywords: Electronic commerce, information and communication technology, electronic business, mobile commerce, developing countries, technology transfer, emerging economies, digital economy, Middle East, Yemen. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-21-04 Publication date:July 31st 201

The impact of students' attitude and subjective norm on the behavioural intention to use services of banking system

This study examines the ability and application of the theory of reasoned action TRA in explaining the use of banking system in Yemen.It investigates the impact of two theoretical variables attitude and subjective norms, using a sample consists of university students, on individuals' intention to use banking services. The results of the study revealed a strong predictive power of the theory of reasoned action model to explain university students' behavioural intention to use banking services. Statistically, the finding demonstrated that there are significant and positive relationships between students' attitude, subjective norm as predictor variables on the criterion variable of behavioural intention to use banking services in the context of Yemen. This study adds to the literature by showing non-financial variables such as attitude and subjective norm, which are important in understanding the behavioural intentions toward using banking services. It also provides some theoretical and practical implication. This study is one of the few studies that used theory of reasoned action in the context of Yemen. Furthermore, it has proven its effectiveness in predicting the behavioural intention of students towards using banking services. In addition, the finding will help to design strategies to attract more customers to use the banking system

Factors Determining the Purchase Intention of Bank Services in the Republic of Yemen

The issue of motivating consumers to use the banking system was solved in developed countries and in some Middle Eastern countries. However, it is still unpredictable in Yemen where the majority of the people do not use banking services to facilitate their financial needs. Therefore, it shapes a real problem and negatively impacted the Yemeni economy. This research project aimed to provide better awareness of the variables that might affect people to use the Yemeni banking system by applying the theory of reasoned action. This study is cross-sectional, 850 questionnaires were distributed to part time university students. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the contribution of independent variables in predicting behavioral intention, the dependent variable. Moreover, hierarchical regressions were used to test the effect of trust as a moderator variable. Eight variables of attitude and subjective norm were significantly and positively influence university student's behavioral intention to use banking services namely, attitude toward bank usage, attitude towards banking services, attitude toward service quality, attitude towards banking legal framework, social influence, recommendation by others on bank services, and bank advertisement. On the other hand, cultural belief was significant but in the negative direction. As well as, student’s trust had a statistically moderating effect with only three out of eight variables on the behavioral intention namely attitude toward bank usage, recommendation by others on bank services, cultural belief. The study had a significant contribution to the academic understanding of consumer's behavioral intention in Yemen, which might guide bankers and policy makers to use the right strategy in order to attract more consumers to use the banking system

Actual Purchase Behaviour of Local Brand Antecedents in Yemen: Mediating Effect of Purchase Intention

It cannot be denied that purchase intention and actual purchase have been extensively studied by previous researchers. However, most of the studies related to actual purchase were undertaken in developed countries, and not much has been done in developing countries, such as Yemen. Empirical studies related to the actual purchase of local products in Yemen are limited. Therefore, this study attempts to examine the relationship between patriotism, trust, advertising, price, quality, masculine culture, family, government support and intention and their influence on actual purchase behaviour of consumers in Yemen. This research framework was built and tested based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). In general, this study involved ten latent variables, eight exogeneous variables and two endogenous variables. The research instrument consisted of 78 items adapted from previous studies. Questionnaires were distributed to 1,000 respondents in 50 schools in Yemen. Of those, only 711 questionnaires were returned and could be used for analysis. Analysis was performed using SEM. The results show that intention, patriotism, quality and government support have positive and significant impact on actual purchase. It also shows that patriotism, masculine culture and family have a significantly positive effect on intention, whilst trust, advertising, price, masculine culture, and family do not have a significant effect on actual purchase. The findings of the study also show that purchase intentions have an intervening effect on the relationship between patriotism, masculine culture, and family with the actual purchase. In summary, the TPB is an appropriate basic theory as it can explain the relationship between the variables, whereby the constructed model has shown a good goodness-of-fit index. This study also discusses past empirical findings and practical implications and applications for Yemen, as well as the need to conduct further research related to actual purchase

An investigation of the benefits and barriers of e-business adoption activities in Yemeni SMEs

Yemeni small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are at the early stages of e‐business adoption and their owners and managers need to be supported to gain an understanding of the benefits that their business can achieve from adopting e‐business. Yemeni SMEs are at the early stages of e‐business adoption. The delay in adopting more advanced e‐business solutions are due to factors including the comparatively low level of technology usage within the organization, lack of qualified staff available to develop, implement and support firms’ websites, and limited financial resources. A lack of computer software and hardware resources appears to have a detrimental effect on e‐business adoption amongst Yemeni SMEs

Challenges To Increase Government e-Services Take-Up In Lebanon

Governments around the world are introducing the virtual channel of public service delivery system (UNDESA 2008). This channel allows for integrated public e-services that are available 24/7. However, citizens who do not have access to ICTs, who do not have the ability to use ICTs, and/or who do not accept to use government e-services cannot benefit from these advantages. Therefore, introducing e-services will create three types of divide: access, e-skills, and acceptance divides. This e-service divide will lead to an inferior quality public service translated in a low e-services’ Take-Up. In Lebanon for example, the government is heavily investing in public online services. However, only 26.28 per cent of the Lebanese population has Internet access, 11.45 per cent have PC at home, and only 30.53 per cent have a mobile telephone (OMSAR 2008). It means that e-government will lead to a system where only privileged segments of the population may have access to the government e-services. Therefore the e-government implementation will create a public online service divide constituted of three types of inequalities: (1) inequality in the access to e-services between citizens, (2) inequality in the ability to use e-services among those who have access, and (3) inequality in e-services acceptance among those who have the access and the ability to use ICTs and e-services. Reducing this e-services divide can enhance the value of services to the citizens and that can dramatically increase e-services Take-Up

An Empirical Analysis of the Policy Makers Preferences towards e-Government Adoption

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 협동과정 기술경영·경제·정책전공, 2013. 2. 이종수.Over the last several years, advances of Internet and networking technologies (especially e-Government) have pushed the boundaries forward and attracted the attention of governments in developed and developing nations. Government organizations, particularly in the developing world, have realized that the world is changing at an incredible pace because of these technological changes. This realization has led to a strong desire and ambitious vision to empower new technologies in their reform processes. Thus, governments should develop and formulate national strategies and policies to promote information economy and achieve socioeconomic benefits. In doing so, governments can attain a more efficient operations reform and enhance productivity and transparency. To this end, implementing an e-Government system is considered essential to attaining this goal. The process of innovation in government sectors is still a major challenge for many developing governments. Yemen is a third-world country that is trying to implement a new electronic government system in public agencieshowever, as seen in other developing countries, Yemen has faced many failures due to several reasons, most importantly, the high rate of resistance to change by employees in government sector. To this extent, the goal of this research is to investigate the preferences and opinions of various government staff (normal employees, technical staff, and decision makers) toward e-Government system implementation. Policy recommendations are driven based on this aim in terms of e-Government adoption promotion with specific empirical analysis in Yemen. To date, no study, experimental or otherwise, has been conducted in this field. As such, this research will provide valuable insights for the government and expert policy makers concerning research on e-Government in developing countries. This research used quantitative and qualitative methods and applied two recent methodologies to achieve that goal. The first method was Conjoint Analysis (CA), based on Discrete Choice Modeling (DCM) and Random Utility Theory (RUT), with rank-ordered mixed logit model. The second methodology was an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), based on Multi-Criteria Decision Making method (MCDM), to examine government officials opinions in ranking successful factors in the implementation of a robust e-Government in Yemen. To build a policy setting, this study also included heterogeneity into the mixed logit model via a random coefficient setting and the interaction of the identified e-Government attributes with demographics and respondent characteristics. The attributes involved for the conjoint analysis study are e-Government Strategy, Legal framework, Government Electronic Administration Office (GEA), Portal language, Privacy as a proxy of security, Training, and Operational Cost as an annual budget for the e-Government system. Moreover, the factors tested for the analytical hierarchy analysis are Governing factors including (administrative and legislative factors), Organizational factors including (organizational structure and technological factors), and External factors including (citizen-centric and economic factors). The result of the analysis of the conjoint study proved that the privacy of government and personal data clearly exerts the greatest impact on preference structure, followed by a strong legal framework for the implementation of e-Government. However, there was evidence for the cost sensitivity that policy makers experience in this field. Government officials should address this issue through electronic obligation policies for penetration of e-Government. Additionally, respondents preferred implementing the e-Government system with a clear and tailored long-term strategy that outlined different stages of the implementation. The findings of this study are imperative to create policies for enhancing e-Government implementation in Yemen, which should include strengthening the government to adopt the system in government agencies, generating and enabling an environment that supports user access, and expanding e-Government capabilities with reliable and fast online services for citizen. Based on the quantitative findings of the CA and AHP, this study applied a qualitative research method to supplement the empirical results by interviewing decision makers within the Yemen government. The researcher then applied priority settings for policies to drive the Gap Analysis and identify reasons for the mismatch found between the researchs perceptions and realities in Yemen. Ultimately, this study anticipates warranting the need for a supply-based analysis of e-Government adoption by government officials in developing countries, thus, increasing the rate of adoption and reducing the rate of resistance to change to this electronic system of government.Table of Contents Abstract i Table of Contents v List of Figures ix List of Tables x Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Overall Introduction 1 1.2 Purpose of Dissertation 6 1.3 Structure of the Dissertation 10 Chapter 2 Research Background and problem discussion 13 2.1 ICT overview in Yemen 13 2.2 E-Government development in Yemen 15 2.2.1 UN e-Government ranking for Yemen 16 2.2.2 History Development 17 2.2.3 Current situation 19 2.3 Challenges for e-Government implementation in developing countries 20 2.3.1 Administrative Challenges 23 2.3.2 Legislative Challenges 25 2.3.3 Organizational Challenges 26 2.3.4 Technological Challenges 28 2.3.5 Citizen-Centric Challenges 30 2.3.6 Financial Challenges 34 2.4 Problem discussion on e-Government implementation in Yemen 37 Chapter 3 : Previous Studies and Literature Review 40 3.1 E-Government Concepts 40 3.1.1 Definition of E-Government 40 3.1.2 E-Government Benefits 43 3.1.4 E-Government Applications 44 3.2 E-Government Adoption Studies 48 3.2.1 The Developed Countries 48 3.2.2 The Developing Countries 53 3.3 The Research Methodologies Related Literature 57 3.3.1 Discrete Choice Modeling 57 3.3.2 Analytical Hierarchy Process 63 3.4 Implications of Existing Literature 70 Chapter 4 Preferences based on Discrete Choice Modeling 73 4.1 Methodological Framework 73 4.1.1 Random Utility Model (RUM) 73 4.1.2 Willingness To Pay (WTP) 75 4.2 Empirical Model 77 4.2.1 Rank-ordered Mixed Logit Model 78 4.3 Survey and Data 82 4.3.1 Conjoint Survey 82 4.3.2 Attributes and attributes levels 84 4.3.3 Data Collection 91 4.3.4 Descriptive Statistics 92 4.4 Empirical Results and Discussion 98 4.4.1 Model Specification and Estimation 98 4.4.2 Rank-ordered Mixed Logit Model Estimation 101 4.4.3 Model Estimation with socio-demographics interactions 113 Chapter 5 Preferences based on Analytical Hierarchy Process 116 5.1 Methodological framework 116 5.2 AHP Model 119 5.3 Survey and Data 120 5.3.1 AHP survey 121 5.3.2 Data collection 123 5.4 Analysis and Results 125 5.4.1 Prioritizing the identified factors 125 5.4.2 AHP and Group Decision Making 128 5.4.3 Overall Inconsistency ratio 129 5.4.4 Participants Preferences for each group 130 5.4.5 Similarities and dissimilarity perspectives of groups preferences 139 5.4.6 Overall Aggregated Preferences Results (Combined ALL Groups): 144 5.4.7 Results and Discussions: 148 Chapter 6 Gap Analysis and Policy Implications 156 6.1 Framework of the Gap Analysis 156 6.2 Summary of the Quantitative Findings 158 6.3 Qualitative Analysis 162 6.3.1 Structure of Qualitative Analysis 163 6.3.2 Main Qualitative Findings 166 6.4 Gap Analysis 169 6.5 Policy Implications 174 Chapter 7 : Overall Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Research 183 Bibliography 187 Appendixes 201 Appendix A- Official Letter for conducting the survey 201 Appendix B- Survey Questionnaires 202 B1. Questionnaire in Arabic 202 B2. Questionnaire in English 212 Appendix C 223 C1.The generated choice cards 223 C2. AHP Inconsistency of each respondent (Total 65 respondents) 224 C3. Overall Relative Importance w. r. t. Goal: the priority of each criteria 225 C4. Details of the Qualitative Findings 226 Abstract in Korean 227 Acknowledgments 231Docto

Technology Acceptance of E-Banking Services in an Unnatural Environment

Purpose- The effect of technology acceptance of e-banking services on satisfaction has been well studied in a system. It is characterized as being in a state of orderliness; however, there is the dearth of study in an unnatural environment, among others.  Design/Methodology- Data were collected through a structured questionnaire from 304 staff of Federal Medical Centre, Owo, Nigeria, that were selected using a random sampling technique. The study hypotheses were assessed with PLS-SEM methodology. Findings- Findings from the study suggest that the customers’ level of perceived usefulness of e-banking pays more considerable attention to the e-banking channels, implying that the usefulness of the technology is considered crucial among the respondents. The SEM results showed that the relationship was positive and significant with small effects. Practical Implications- Customers of e-banking placed emphasis on perceived usefulness in an environment characterized as unnatural

The global information technology report 2014

Executive summary When The Global Information Technology Report (GITR) and the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) were created more than 13 years ago, the attention of decision makers was focused on how to develop strategies that would allow them to benefit from what Time Magazine had described as “the new economy”: a new way of organizing and managing economic activity based on the new opportunities that the Internet provided for businesses. At present, the world is slowly emerging from one of the worst financial and economic crises in decades, and policymakers, business leaders, and civil society are looking into new opportunities that can consolidate growth, generate new employment, and create business opportunities. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) continue to rank high on the list as one of the key sources of new opportunities to foster innovation and boost economic and social prosperity, for both advanced and emerging economies. For more than 13 years, the NRI has provided decision makers with a useful conceptual framework to evaluate the impact of ICTs at a global level and to benchmark the ICT readiness and usage of their economies

Impediments to the Growth of Information and Communication Technologies in Africa’s Least Developed Countries, LDCs

The paper under took a critical examination of the impediments to the growth of the ICTs in Africa’s Least Developed Countries, LDCs. It began by exploring the “window of opportunities” ICTs hold for the LDCs. The paper however argued that these benefits can only touch on the lives of this section of the world if ICTs are made affordable, and the issue of poverty is adequately addressed. Among the several road bumps against ICT diffusion in LDCs that the paper identified are illiteracy, poverty, poor ICT infrastructure, and weak policy and regulatory framework. It is the paper’s position that these obstacles, no matter how daunting they look, are surmountable given the right government policy and collaboration among the government, the private sector and civil society. The work offered elaborate measures of how to dismantle the road blocks against ICTs’ penetration in LDCs. Key words: Impediments, Information, Communication, Technology, Least Developed   Countrie