The Impact of E-Commerce on Emerging Markets
Chapter One
Objectives of the Study
- To study how e-commerce aids in the economic development of developing countries.
- To identify the relationship between e-commerce and emerging markets.
- To identify the significant impact of e-commerce on emerging markets.
- To assess the influence of e-commerce in developing an economy.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Introduction
E-commerce is the use of the Internet for marketing, identification, payment and delivery of goods and services. Through the e-commerce technology, the Internet has revolutionized the mode of business transactions by providing consumers with the ability to bank, invest, purchase, distribute, communicate, explore, and research from virtually anywhere, anytime where there is Internet access (Anup, 1997). Most importantly, it has created electronic markets and provided opportunities for businesses to reach consumers in a very direct way. Also by virtue of the technology, it has enabled consumers’ immediate access to these electronic markets. Nigeria is the fastest growing telecommunication country in Africa (Ayo et al., 2007). The growth of a number of Internet users from year 2000 to 2010 is sporadic as it recorded 21,891.1% growth rate! According to the Internet World Start (2010), there were 200,000 internet users in Nigeria in year 2000. This number is however less than 1% of the national population (precise 0.1%). In the year 2006 – the number has grown to 5,000,000 (again just 3.1% of the national population). This figure doubled in 2008 with 10million people having access to the Internet. In 2009, the figure went above double as 23,982,000million people used Internet in Nigeria. By June 2010, the number of internet users in Nigeria has grown to 43,982,200 that is 29.5% of the country’s population. The increasing users of internet in Nigeria from 0.1% in 2000 to 29.5% of its population in June 2010, revealed that the use of internet in the country is growing at a sporadic rate and still has the potential to grow higher. Despite the growth of internet users in Nigeria, much research work has not been done in accessing the B2C e-commerce activity. Presently, many online shopping sites are thriving in Nigeria, servicing thousands of searchers every week. Some of them are: www.234world.com, Xtaples.net, www.booksng.com, www.orderbay.com. Some of these sites make the transaction process so easy buyers to forget about the open market. A site like 234world.com allows buyer to pay to a designated bank account after making online purchases. The items purchased are then shipped to the buyer at the speed of light. SoftPay allows individual to receive money online and thereafter use it to pay for purchases made. It even helps online shopping sites to collect payment for purchases made. Considering all these, it is expected that the number of people engaging in e-commerce activity will increase. E-commerce has however not been widely tapped into. Many Nigerians still treat its benefits with deep skepticism. They do not believe that e-commerce transactions could be successfully conducted. While there is proliferation of Internet usage, e-payment systems and online presence of businesses, much work has not been done about business-to-consumers activities. There is need to understand how and why people participate in e-commerce activities. Therefore, the objective of this study is to assess the prospect and challenges of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce implementation in Nigeria from the consumers’ perspective. The study treats consumer ecommerce as a technology adoption process and evaluates the suitability of extended technology acceptance model to determine factors that might explain ecommerce adoption among consumers in Nigeria. disapperforming a specific behaviour. According to the TRA, individuals’ attitudes towards behaviours are determined by their most important beliefs and the consequences of performing specific behaviours. As Fishbein et al. (1975) demonstrated through their theory, behaviour is best predicted by intentions, and intentions are jointly determined by the person’s attitude and subjective norm concerning the behaviour. TAM’s proposition posits two constructs: Perceived usefulness (PU) which is defined as “the prospective user’s subjective probability that using a specific application system will increase his or her job performance” and perceived ease of use (PEOU), which refers to the degree to which the prospective user expects the target system to be free of effort (Davis et al., 1989). Both perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have been used in examining users’ acceptance of information systems. Perceived usefulness has been proven consistently as significant in attitude formation (Moon et al., 2000; Venkatesh, 2000; Venkatesh et al., 2000). TAM has also been employed to predict consumers’ adoption of Web technology (Pavlou, 2003; Tang et al; Klopping and Mckinney, 2004). Lee et al. (2001) extended TAM with perceived risk (PR). They found that the TAM predicted individual purchasing behaviour online and that perceived risk affects perceived usefulness. Chen et al. (2002) also found TAM effective in evaluating online shopping at “virtual” on-line store. Building on these empirically validated views, the TAM is suitable for determining e-commerce but may not fully determine the users’ intention to adopt the technology. Therefore, the study proposes an extended TAM, with integration of task-technology fit model, trust, and perceived risk to better predict consumers’ adoption of ecommerce. The original TAM was also modified by dropping perceived ease of use perceived usefulness the path based on previous e-commerce adoption studies which argued that Web tools are exceptionally easy to use (Klopping et al., 2004). Also, to simplify TAM, the attitude construct was dropped and focused on the relationship between perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use on intention to use.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
This chapter deals with the method used in collecting data required in carrying out this research work it explains the procedures that were followed and the instrument used in collecting data.
Sources of data collection
Data were collected from two main sources namely:
(i)Primary source and
(ii)Secondary source
Primary source:
These are materials of statistical investigation which were collected by the research for a particular purpose. They can be obtained through a survey, observation questionnaire or as experiment, the researcher has adopted the questionnaire method for this study.
Secondary source:
These are data from textbook Journal handset etc. they arise as byproducts of the same other purposes. Example administration, various other unpublished works and write ups were also used.
Population of the study
Population of a study is a group of persons or aggregate items, things the researcher is interested in getting information for the study e-commerce and retail business in Nigeria; challenges and prospect. The researcher randomly selects 200 staff of selected retail businesses in Nigeria as the population of the study.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION ANALYSIS INTERPRETATION OF DATA
Introduction
Efforts will be made at this stage to present, analyze and interpret the data collected during the field survey. This presentation will be based on the responses from the completed questionnaires. The result of this exercise will be summarized in tabular forms for easy references and analysis. It will also show answers to questions relating to the research questions for this research study. The researcher employed simple percentage in the analysis.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
It is important to ascertain that the objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of e-commerce in an emerging market.
In the preceding chapter, the relevant data collected for this study were presented, critically analyzed and appropriate interpretation given. In this chapter, certain recommendations made which in the opinion of the researcher will be of benefits in addressing the challenges of e-commerce on emerging business in Nigeria.
Summary
Many companies, organizations and communities in Nigeria are beginning to take advantages of the opportunities offered by e – commerce, critical challenges remain to be overcome before e – commerce would become an asset for a common man in Nigeria. Challenges like, consumer’s confusion, apprehension and risk need to be identified, understood and alleviated. E – Commerce provides tremendous opportunities in different areas but it requires careful application for consumer issues.
Conclusion
E-Commerce dominance has been on the increase and the growth worldwide has been phenomenon. While may be impossible to completely eliminate brick and mortar business, the reality is that E-Commerce is the future of commerce globally and developing nations been part of a world that has been reduced to a global village have no option 60 than to flow in the direction of the tide or they will be left behind. It is also imperative the consumers who are the end users of the E-Commerce products are continually encouraged so as to ensure attitudinal changes so that they can become more disposed to using these products and platforms. The developing nations are not immune from the fact that E-commerce rightly rides on a technology that causes boundaries of nations to collapse, a platform that has made distance no much of an issue in trade and commerce. It is high time that the developing nations embraced this phenomenon holistically. While issues and challenges of E-Commerce in developing nations are factual, consumer attitude to E-Commerce is changing, as we have seen in the data analysis chapter of the rise in the usage of different platforms by consumers in developing markets. The developing nations are becoming more dominant in the global economy as they are the terrain where growth opportunities for businesses now exist if this is juxtaposed with the realization that E-Commerce represents the future of commerce worldwide, it can therefore be concluded that for developing economies to keep developing, consumer attitude to frequently be checked by regularly feeling the pulse of the consumers that uses there E-Commerce products and platforms as it wouldn’t make too much sense to invest so much into making these products and platforms available and consumer attitude as not moved away from the brick and mortar ways.
Recommendations
Haven completed the study, the researcher therefore proffer the following recommendations; Issuers of electronic transactions will need to take great care to ensure that the danger of counterfeiting is minimized and they must be very vigilant in monitoring their systems and operations so that fraud can be detected quickly when it occurs.
They should identify ways to increasing interests of e-commerce among retail businesses.
Reduce the usage of traditional payment methods; the traditional payments, where the clumsy and expensive way to handle notes is being replaced by efficient electronic means initiated by various types of plastic cards
Reference
- Anup KG (1997). Securing E-Commerce: A Systemic Approach. J. Internet Bank. Commer.
- Ba S, Pavlou PA (2002), Evidence of the effect of trust in electronic markets: Price premiums and buyer behavior. MIS Q., 26 (3) 243- 268.
- Belkhamza Z, Wafa SA (2009) The Effect of Perceived Risk on the Intention to Use E-commerce: The Case of Algeria. J. Internet Bank. Commer., 14(1).
- Chen L, Gillenson M, Sherrell D (2002). Enticing online consumers: An extended technology acceptance perspective. Inform. Manag., 39(8): 705-719.
- Davis FD (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Q., 13(3): 318-39.
- Davis FD, Bagozzi R P, Warshaw P R(1989). User Acceptance of Computer Technology: A Comparison of Two Theoretical Models. Manage. Sci., 35: 982-1003
