ICTs as a Decisive Factor in the Competitiveness of the Commercial Sector in the City of Guayaquil

Abstract

The commercial activity in Ecuador is highly concentrated in the city of Guayaquil, where the most important commercial seaport of the country is located, and therefore constitutes the main gate for exports and imports. This generates a demanding market, which has increasingly adopted Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) because of their efficiency, effectiveness and affordability, and as a part of a global trend to virtual communication and hyperconnection. The present study aims to detail the level of market evolution in the use of ICTs in the city of Guayaquil, indicating the participation of corporate and non-corporate users in the ICT market nationwide. Furthermore, it intends to identify the type of user that prefers the use of ICTs to conduct their economic transactions, and to conclude which business sector has been the most benefited in this new scenario. For this purpose, and to test the validity of the general hypothesis, the investigative process followed a descriptive approach, complemented with documental and statistical research. The discussion presents hard data from official sources, and the conclusions are shown in the final section.