An assessment of electronic commerce. (c2002)

Abstract

Electronic Commerce is becoming an area of strategic concern to most organizations. Enabled by new, networked technology, e-commerce is rapidly becoming an integral part of the many different ways people and organizations do business and manage information. The Internet economy is expanding very rapidly and the pace of change is speeding up. While E-commerce is growing rapidly in the world, E-commerce in Lebanon is still in its embryonic stage. In fact, only 2% of the population is online. This study is done in order to shed light on electronic commerce in the world and all the business models since its initiation till our days. But the most important is to analyze to what extent the Lebanese customers as well as the businesses accept the Internet as a means of doing business. A descriptive analysis is adopted to present the study results and analyze the findings in a way that enables the researcher objectives, which are the assessment of E-commerce implementation in Lebanon Data has been collected and acquired from three sources: secondary sources, and primary sources. The primary data are divided between a questionnaire analysis and a case study about a Lebanese online organization followed by an interview with Mrs. Rola Moussa, the manager. Another interview was also held with Dr. Salah Rustum, CEO of GlobalSign to shed light on electronic commerce in Lebanon as well as the security issues and digital signatures. The questionnaires were filled by students from (LAU), (AUB), (AUST), and (USJ) as well as Faculty from LAU. Employees came from a broad variety of organizations belonging to various sectors and from different managerial sectors and functional divisions such as banks, Medical Institution, and Trading Companies. More than two hundred and ten questionnaires were distributed to students and employees. Only one hundred fifty one questionnaires were filled and returned. That is, 72% was the response rate. The analysis of data was done through the facilities of a statistical package of social science (SPSS) The concepts to be assessed are as follows: Internet Literacy, Electronic Commerce Literacy, and attitude toward electronic commerce. Lebanese users do accept all new technologies and electronic commerce is being accepted in a way or another by the educated people first and it will be widespread among the majority of the Lebanese users. Thus, implementing new education systems that enhance Internet literacy and reducing the cost of going online, will encourage the use of the Internet and consequently will increase Electronic commerce and its applications. Accepting Electronic commerce as the most effective way to do business is finally related to patterns of future life and the mentality of people.