Willingness to Use E-Commerce During Coronavirus Pandemic in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The traditional retail market has been declining in recent years, while e-retailing has grown at an accelerated rate during the COVID-19 pandemic's lockdown era. The main purpose of the research is to look at the effect of the coronavirus outbreak on the shifting trends of electronic commerce (e-commerce) in Saudi Arabia. The authors investigate the impacts of factors derived by COVID-19 had on the e-commerce market. One hundred sixty individuals operating in e-commerce in the private sector in Saudi Arabia completed a self-administered questionnaire, including demographic information and three sections of five scale questions that meet the study's objectives. Most participants were males (66.2%), 56.2 % were aged between 30 and 40 years old, 38.75% had 5-10 years of experience in the private sector, 40.6% worked in companies with more than 500 employees, and 43.0% of them from lives in Riyadh. The weighted average of the 1st section is 3.19 ± 0.75, indicating that the trend of the establishment of whether lack of alternatives has a positive implication on the intent of using e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic is «Neutral». The weighted average of the 2nd section is 3.43 ± 1.17, which indicates the trend of determining whether the perceived ease of use has a positive implication on the adoption intent of consumers using e-commerce during a COVID-19 outbreak is «Agree». The weighted average of the 3rd section is 3.29 ± 0.90, which indicates the trend of exploring the underlying factors that leads to losses for many businesses during the crisis is «Neutral». Furthermore, the highest percentage of participants (56.2%) mentioned that their company was not prepared for another lockdown. The research results could be useful for further analysis of different domains of the e-commerce market that developed during the pandemic. They could be utilized for examining opinions about e-commerce and whether the public wanted to switch from offline to online mode of marketing.