E-commerce Propagation in The Middle East Economies: an Application of a Revised Technology Acceptance Model

E-commerce is the technology of conducting commercial transactions via electronic media. The Internet has provided this media to the extent that commerce is being increasingly made through it. However, another side of commerce, which included the (heavy lifting) of physical goods are still traversing the distribution channels and employing the traditional transportation infrastructure with varying efficiency and cost. This paper examines the employment and adoption of this technology within the Middle East businesses, and what are the barriers that hinder this adoption. The famous Technology Acceptance Model, TAM is implemented with some variations to identify the difficulties associated with implementing ebusiness models through a survey of key stakeholders in this industry, namely procurement professional and logistics managers. One hundred forty five participants filled the survey questionnaire aimed at measuring their responses to perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), attitudes towards usage (ATU) and behavioral intention to use (BIU) the e-business system The results shows that the main factors holding the propagation of e-commerce in these countries, and in spite of growing interests and belief in implementing e-commerce, are related to the inertia of the legacy operating systems, the lack of compatible infrastructure, the security of information, and the level of business ethics. A conceptual mathematical probability model is developed to estimate a new TAM as an MTAM where the acceptance is computed as an average probability of six interaction factors. Several conclusions were arrived at including the need for the development and installation of a legal framework for safeguarding against abuse and illegal schemes of defrauding consumers.