E-Commerce Adoption Among Small and Medium Enterprises in Saudi Arabia

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationships between contexts and the e-commerce adoption among SMEs in Saudi Arabia. These contexts included organisational (firm size, attitude, innovativeness, knowledge), technology (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity), and environmental characteristics (competition intensity, information intensity). The study also attempted to determine the moderating effect of culture on these relationshps. Rogers's (2003) Diffusion of Innovations Theory and Tomatzky and Fleischer's (1990) method were used as a basis for the framework. In addition, Hofstede's cultural dimensions (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity) were used as moderators. A quantitative and survey research design was adopted to collect data, test hypotheses, and answer research questions in the study. A total of 1150 questionnaires were sent to SME owner/managers in Saudi Arabia, and 400 were returned, giving a response rate of 34.78 percent. The results of the study revealed that attitude, firm size, competition intensity, and information intensity had a significant, positive relationship with the e-commerce adoption. However, knowledge and relative advantage had a significant negative relationship with the e-commerce adoption. In addition, the results showed that power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity had partially moderating effect on the relationship between organisational context and e-commerce adoption and the relationship between environmental context and e-commerce adoption. Regarding technology context, the result showed that power distance and masculinity had partially moderating effect on e-commerce adoption. On the contrary, the results found that uncertainty avoidance and individualism had no moderated effects. This research adds to the existing body of knowledge on e-commerce adoption and discovers additional contexts by offering organisational, technology, and environmental characteristics and the moderating effect of culture on the influence of these contexts regarding the adoption of e-commerce technology among SMEs for more informed decisions. The OTE Model of Innovation Adoption, the DoI theory, and Hofstede's cultural dimensions combined to form a richer theoretical framework that guided the understanding and prediction of e-commerce adoption among SMEs. In addition, this study showed SME owner/managers the opportunities and benefits of e-commerce adoption in a business environment. Furthermore, the results of the study may provide solutions and recommendations for SMEs and governments to successfully implement ecommerce

E-commerce on the move - Malaysian scenario

One of the fastest growing areas of E-Commerce today is mobile commerce. There are more users of mobile devices such as laptops, palm PCs, cellular phones and personal digital/data assistants (PDAs).A mobile device is a personal unit that is within reach and provides anywhere and anytime access to the user.The penetration rate of cellular phones in most developed and developing countries is much larger than that of personal computers.Recent roll-outs of public wireless broadband infrastructure of 2.5G and 3G networks have made opportunities for mobile commerce become a reality and will affect our daily lives in work, leisure and recreation.This analytical paper attempts to study the development of E-commerce in Malaysia.A part from this, the paper will also construct SWOT analysis and identify the impact of M-commerce on the political, economic, social and technological environment.Finally, recommendation will be given of the best alternate strategies for the promotion and development of M-commerce in the nation

Optimum QoS resource allocation algorithm for video traffic over wireless mesh networks based on IEEE 802.11s

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a communications network consists of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. WMNs are gaining wide popularity due to their ability to integrate several networks in one network. It increases reliability and improved performance over conventional wireless LANs. Wi-Fi could be integrated in WMN. Several standards of IEEE 802.11 were created to support and deal with specific tasks of Wi-Fi. IEEE 802.11s has been created to support QoS in WMNs where it has been approved as a standard lately. However, it is still has some limitations in supporting QoS. In this paper we introduce our work which is built depends on previous works where all of them deal with TDMA/TDD and aims to enhance the QoS. We propose a scheduling mechanism which works in MAC layer in wireless mesh networking based on IEEE 802.11s. It gives the delayed video users the priority to serve them first while maintaining the QoS of audio and data users. This paper provides our results compared with previous works. We introduce them with a huge discussion, according to the QoS requirements

Synthesis and antimicrobial activity of some new pyrrole derivatives

New pyrrole derivatives were synthesized and structures were confirmed by IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR, mass spectra, and elemental analyses data. The reaction was performed by using ordinary condensation type, which enabled to easy work-up and good yield. Synthesized compounds were screened for antimicrobial activity.KEY WORDS: Pyrrole, 1,3,4-oxadiazol-2-amine, 4H-1,2,4-triazol-3-ol, Cyclization, Antimicrobial activity, Structure activity relationship Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2012, 26(3), 429-435.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/bcse.v26i3.1

Comparative Performance Analysis of Flower Pollination Algorithm and Harmony Search based strategies: A Case Study of Applying Interaction Testing in the Real World

The main purpose of software testing is to detect software failures to ensure that that a product functions work as expected. Therefore there is need to test hug possible number of input combinations. T-way testing is a sampling approach to minimize input combinations. Recently, adapting optimization algorithm for T-way testing is very interested. As a consequence, many t-way optimization algorithm based strategies have been designed and implemented. In order to guide software tester to choose the best software testing strategy, there is a need to evaluate and benchmark the performance of each strategy against common case studies. In this paper, we present a comparison between two strategies, Harmony Search (HS) and Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) based strategies. Our experiments have performed on a real-world case study. Experiments results demonstrate that the performance is almost the same for both strategies and there is no one strategy can always be the best; however HS-based strategy performs better than FPA-based in many cases

A BENIGN SYNTHESIS OF 2-AMINO-3-CYANO-4H-BENZOPYRANS VIA DOMINO REACTION

A green and operationally simple approach domino reaction has been developed for the synthesis of 2-amino-3-cyano- 4H-chromene derivatives from aromatic aldehydes, resorcinol and malononitrile in aqueous medium. This work represents the first example of catalyst free and organic solvents free multi-component reactions for the synthesis of pharmaceutically important chromene derivatives. The structures of the synthesized compounds were confirmed by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, IR, Mass and single crystal XRD.  Keywords: Benzopyrans, malononitrile, Michael addition reaction, domino reaction, water mediated synthesis

AN EFFICIENT, GREEN, CATALYST FREE SYNTHESIS AND CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC STUDY OF BENZO-4H-PYRANS IN AQUEOUS MEDIUM

A highly efficient and environmentally benign for the synthesis a of 2-amino-7-hydroxy-4-aryl-4H-chromene-3-carbonitrile derivatives (4a-n) in good to high yields (90%-97%) by one-pot three-component Michael addition reaction of malononitrile, aromatic aldehydes and resorcinol under reflux condition was developed in aqueous medium. Single crystal X-ray studies show that 4h crystallizes in the formula C22H15Cl2N2O2, Mr=410.26, Monoclinic, Space group P2(1)/c, a=12.753(9)Å, b=6.665(4)Å, c=24.050(14) Å, β=102.95(3)A° and 4i C16H10Cl2N2O2, Mr=333.16, Triclinic, Space group P-1, a=6.271(3)Å, b=18.697(5)Å, c =13.794(7) Å,  β =94.269(17)A°. The structure of the products were further confirmed by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, IR and Mass spectrum. Keywords: Benzopyrans, malononitrile, resorcinol, Michael addition, water mediated synthesis, single crystal XR

Algorithm for enhancing the QoS of video traffic over wireless mesh networks

One of the major issues in a wireless mesh networks (WMNs) which needs to be solved is the lack of a viable protocol for medium access control (MAC). In fact, the main concern is to expand the application of limited wireless resources while simultaneously retaining the quality of service (QoS) of all types of traffic. In particular, the video service for real-time variable bit rate (rt-VBR). As such, this study attempts to enhance QoS with regard to packet loss, average delay, and throughput by controlling the transmitted video packets. The packet loss and average delay of QoS for video traffic can be controlled. Results of simulation show that Optimum Dynamic Reservation-Time Division Multiplexing Access (ODR-TDMA) has achieved excellent utilization of resource that improvised the QoS meant for video packets. This study has also proven the adequacy of the proposed algorithm to minimize packet delay and packet loss, in addition to enhancing throughput in comparison to those reported in previous studies

The Frequency Theoretic Estimation of non-Linear Key Generator Sequences

The Randomness is one of the basic criterions to measure Key Generator Efficiency. The key generator depends basically on Linear FeedBack Shift Register which is considered as one of the basic units of Stream Cipher Systems. In this paper, the frequency postulate of Randomness criteria is calculated theoretically for non-linear key generator before it be implemented or constructed (software or hardware), this procedure save time and costs. Two non-linear key generators are chosen to apply the theoretical studies; these key generators are the Product and Brüer

Life cycle cost analysis of a sustainable solar water distillation technique

This paper presents a detailed estimation of the fabrication cost, water production cost (WC), and cost payback period (CPP) using annualized life cycle costing for a tubular solar still (TSS). The operation and maintenance cost (OM) and the number of sunny days in a year (d) have a significant effect on the WC. The WC is raised from 3.1 to 4.4¥/L, if the OM increases from 5 to 18% of the capital cost, respectively. The WC is dropped by 35% (in average) when the d increases from 230 to 350 days. In addition, the CPP is greatly affected by the water selling prices and d. The CPP is dropped from 68 to 45 days due to the increase of d from 230 to 350 days (in average), respectively. The fabrication cost of the TSS ($5) and the WC ($31/m3) are affordable and much lower than the single-sloped passive solar still. Finally, it is revealed that the solar radiation is the most influential parameter on the productivity of TSS and a linear proportional relationship is found between them