Current Technological Impediments to Business-to-Consumer Electronic Commerce

Internet and World Wide Web technologies provide the infrastructure for the Electronic Commerce (e-Commerce) revolution now taking place. As a result of these technologies, even the smallest organization can afford to market its wares to hundreds of millions of potential e-Consumers. However, these technologies also pose threats to the very electronic commerce which they enable. For managers to strategize and implement e-Commerce effectively in their organizations, these impediments need to be recognized and understood. While hundreds of articles identify problems with Internet computing or conducting e-Commerce, no unified framework of technological impediments specific to e-Commerce yet exists. The goal of this paper is to identify the primary technological impediments to e-Commerce. Six categories of technological impediments have been identified. Those which appear to pose the greatest threats to the development of e-Commerce are: (1)download delays, (2) limitations in the interface, (3) search problems, (4) inadequate measurement of Web application success, (5) security (real and perceived) weaknesses, and (6) a lack of Internet standards. Associated costs, threats, and limitations specific to e-Commerce are also identified and implications explored. The paper concludes with an assessment of ways to mitigate these obstacles, including design choices, workarounds, and emerging technological solutions. A bibliography of 296 relevant trade press articles is included in the appendix

Evaluating global e-government sites: A view using web diagnostics tools

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2004 The AuthorsSeveral governments across the world have embraced the digital revolution and continue to take advantage of the information and communication facilities offered by the Internet to offer public services. Conversely, citizens’ awareness and expectations of Internet based online-public-services have also increased in recent times. Although the numbers of the different national e-Government web portals have rapidly increased in the last three years, the success of these portals will largely depend on their accessibility, quality and privacy. This paper reports the results of an evaluative study of a cross-section of e-Government portals from these three perspectives, using a common set of performance metrics and Web diagnostic engines. Results show that not only are there wide variations in the spectrum of information and services provided by these portals, but that significant work still needs to be undertaken in order to make the portals examples of ‘best practice’ e-Government services

Effect of Website Characteristics on Consumer Behavior: A Multilevel Analysis

This paper uses a hierarchical linear modeling approach to examine factors that affect Website effectiveness from a customer viewpoint. Use of hierarchical linear modeling allows analysis of multilevel and cross-level interactions that have not been explicitly considered in previous research. Our preliminary analysis of online Web survey data suggests that the relative importance of different Website features may vary depending on the domain in which Websites are nested

Electronic Government Service Acceptance: the E-Gov-Sam Aspect of the E-Revenue System

Electronic services are important in government to citizen electronic commerce; however, little is known about electronic government service acceptance model (E-GOV-SAM model). This research aims to develop the determinants of E-GOV-SAM model in the context of e-revenue. The empirical survey results from personal income tax payers show that electronic government service quality has positive impact on building trust and intention to use egovernment service. Results indicate that risks adversely affect trust and intention to adopt egovernment service. Adoption influence has no impact on building trust but does have an impact on the intention to use

The influence of privacy perceptions on online shopping behavior - a comparison between millennials and baby boomers

Privacy and security perceptions are growing topics in e-commerce. To develop a successful marketing strategy, it is crucial to know and address privacy concerns to prevent them from negatively influencing the online shopping behavior of customers. Perceived risk and trust are chosen to measure privacy perceptions. This study focuses on two generational cohorts, the millennials and baby boomers. The aim of the research is to investigate differences in privacy perceptions influencing their online shopping behavior. The research question is answered by analyzing data from German respondents

Privately Waiting – A Usability Analysis of the Tor Anonymity Network

As the Internet is increasingly absorbing information from the real world it becomes more important to prevent unauthorized collection and abuse of personalized information. At the same time, democratic societies should establish an environment helping not only their own people but also people who face repressive censorship to access public information without being identified or traced. Internet anonymization tools such as Tor offer functionalities to meet this demand. In practice, anonymization of Internet access can only be achieved by accepting higher latency, i.e., a longer waiting time before a Web site is displayed in the browser, and therefore reducing its usability significantly. Since many users may not be willing to accept this loss of usability, they may refrain from or stop using Tor – at the same time decreasing the anonymity of other users, which depends on shared resources in the Tor user community. In this paper1, we quantify the loss of usability by measuring the additional latency of the Tor software and combine our measurements with metrics of the existing Web usability and performance literature. Our findings indicate that there is still a major usability gap induced by Tor, leading to its possible disuse accompanied by a higher risk exposure of Internet users

Developing and Validating an Instrument for Measuring User-Perceived Web Quality

Many of the instruments to measure information and system quality were developed in the context of mainframe and PC-based technologies of yesteryears. With the proliferation of the Internet and World Wide Web applications, users are increasingly interfacing and interacting with web-based applications. It is, therefore, important to develop new instruments and scales, which are directly targeted to these new interfaces and applications. In this article, we report on the development of an instrument that captures key characteristics of web site quality from the user‘s perspective. The 25-item instrument measures four dimensions of web quality: specific content, content quality, appearance and technical adequacy. While improvements are possible, the instrument exhibits excellent psychometric properties. The instrument would be useful to organizations and web designers as it provides an aggregate measure of web quality, and to researchers in related web research

The Management of E-Commerce in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An Exploratory Research

E-commerce is the technology of recognizing commercial dealings via electronic channel. The Internet has offered this channel to the point that trade is being more and more prepared through it. This article observes topics such as the circumstances, acknowledgements etc.  of e-commerce  in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, a comprehensive literature review was conducted about numerous characteristics of e-commerce. The results of the study might shed light to the contemporary e-commerce development topics in Saudi Arabia, which could be constructive for the industry as well as for the academia. Keywords: E-commerce, Saudi Arabia, Vision 2030, Online market. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-6-13 Publication date: February 29th 202

The Relationships among Trust, E-Satisfaction, E-Loyalty, and Customer Online Behaviors

Online shopping behaviors, different from traditional shopping behaviors, are related to information system and characterized with uncertainty, anonymity and potential opportunism. This paper is to conceptualize and analyze customer online behaviors, trust, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). 1258 valid questionnaires are gathered from online customers having e-shopping experiences in Taiwan. Using structural equation modeling, the empirical results indicated that perceived use of use, perceived usefulness, and trust has the significant effects to facilitate customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and further, effects customer’s intentions and behaviors toward online purchasing