A new applicable model of Iran rural e-commerce development

The significant impact of e-commerce (EC) on the livelihood or rural populations in developing countries like Iran has made this topic of popular interest to many researchers in the past decade. To take advantage of e-commerce, employing suitable models which are adaptive to the circumstances of villages in rural areas is indispensable. Iran is on track for achieving this goal, development of EC in Rural areas. Considering the importance of sharing rural ICT experiences, the trend and experiences of the Rural EC infrastructure in Iran are demonstrated in this paper. According to our research, Iran’s rural ICT network development started in 2000 with the far northern village of Shahkooh which is known as the first multi-media center of Iran. In 2004, Iran national strategic plan of Rural ICT built two well-equipped telecentres near the villages of East Livan and Gharnabad. Taking availability of data and the duration of operation al time to account, these two telecenters were selected for this paper. In 2005, UNESCO Tehran Cluster Office was empowered to carry out a study on the economic and social effect of rural ICTs to share with others, acting in this field at regional and social levels. In fact, in order to find applicable and durable solutions for economic, social and environmental problems, these projects were carried out in the rural areas of Iran. In this paper, a practical model of e-commerce for rural areas of Iran is proposed. Our research is based on quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The qualitative methods comprised of open-ended interviews with officials and telecentre operators. The proposed model is related to the national project known as “10000 Rural ICT Center” which was started in the year 2004. In this project, Rural EC services are part of the IT application services at the Rural ICT Centers which supply four services; Communication Services, IT services, Postal Services and E-Banking services.