A Comparison Study of Trust in M-commerce Between Qatari and Non-qatari Customers

Abstract

Over the past few years, mobile commerce (M-commerce), which is a new channel for conducting online businesses has revolutionized the global market. In Qatar, due to lack of trust, an only small percentage of Qatari populations has shown an interest in mobile shopping although the average annual individual’s expenditure is impressive. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate antecedents of consumer’ trust in the context of mobile commerce [1]. The objective of this paper is to explore whether trust perceptions towards mobile shopping among diverse segments of consumers living in Qatar vary significantly or not by proposing a conceptual framework for trust based on the Technology Acceptance Model. An online survey was conducted to empirically validate the newly developed trust factors between consumers with different nationalities, genders, and age ranges by performing permutations and partial lease squares multi-group analysis algorithms. Our research findings revealed that nationalities differences related to the factor perceived usability had positive indirect effect on Qataris trust, female consumers’ trust could be enhanced by perceived usability, and young consumers could easily trust mobile commerce via the endorsement of social media influencers. The results also emphasized that perceived security was one of the most significant factors that affect drastically mobile commerce trust between all groups of consumers. We ended our work offering some valuable theoretical implications for scholars and interesting strategies for practitioners to help to create customer’s trust especially during crises, such as COVID-19.