Some sectors in Saudi Arabia are slow in adopting eCommerce technologies for running their business
transactions, and that is due to an internal set of factors (related to organizations) or an external set of factors
(related to infrastructure and governmental support). We have noticed that most of the studies in this subject
covered either internal factors or external factors, but not both. Moreover, most of the papers that studied
eCommerce adoption factors in developing economies center on the environmental, infrastructural and
governmental areas only, and overlook the organizational factors, while the focus of the subject studied and
researched on developed economies was organizational (SMEs and large enterprises) related adoption factors by
considering the technology infrastructure and government support as taken for granted, which is not the case in
developing economies.
The objectives of this study are 1) to find out the level of eCommerce adoption in Saudi Arabia, and 2) to
identify the factors that affect the adoption of eCommerce. By this, the output of the study can help the policy
maker of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in Saudi Arabia to direct the related activities
toward the most effective local factors that will enable and leverage eCommerce potential and usage on one hand,
and on the other hand the study will identify the promising local opportunities for eCommerce infrastructure
providers (local banks, system integrators, IT solution providers, and major telecom operators) by discovering
the distinctive eCommerce adoption factors.