The roles of culture in online shopping to enhance e-commerce in Jordan

Abstract

One of the e-commerce products that is popular nowadays is online shopping. Online shopping has been experiencing its golden years and becoming one of the potential contributions in e-commerce. In its report, [1] stated that retailers e-commerce sales increased by 18.4 percent from 2006 to 2007 while manufacturers, as the biggest contributor reached 35 percent. The advance of technology has encouraged this development while at the same time Information technology has obliterated the borderline of each country. The implication of this phenomenon is the spread of online shopping websites across the regional. One website originating from Egypt for example will be accessed and used by the people of all around the world. There will be a lot of advantages caused by this. Besides companies, customers gain their profits or advantages as well. E-commerce has been considered as knowledge-based economy that can support the economy of the countries applying it [2]. The importance of e-commerce has caused high competitiveness among the online business doers. Many efforts have been done to discover the factors behind both success and failure of e-commerce specifically online shopping adoption. This includes the abundant studies which are related with online shopping, e-commerce, or cultural values in e-commerce and website design conducted by many researchers and practitioners. One of the important factors in the online shopping is the cultural factors. This paper discusses issues regarding the influence of culture on online shopping in Jordan so that it can enhance the e-commerce in the country. This paper also aims to investigate whether culture takes essential role in the online shopping websites to affect consumers to have intention in doing online shopping transaction.