Social Commerce in Saudi Arabia: Opportunities and Challenges in a Digital Society

Internet and communication technologies have been growing at a rapid pace, enabling data sharing and many other applications. Online trading and e-commerce are important applications that provide ease of business as well as flexibility for buyers. In this paper, we provide an overview of social commerce (s-commerce) in the context of Saudi Arabia. This paper explains s-commerce, the background of Saudi Arabia, and its digital economy vision. This paper also highlights the importance of social media and networking, as well as novel web technologies for s-commerce. We also highlight the research gap in the analysis of s-commerce potential in the Saudi market. This paper conducts a detailed analysis of s-commerce in Saudi Arabia based on a sequential explanatory research design with a quantitative and qualitative phase. The quantitative phase involves a survey based on 504 responses. The qualitative phase involves interview questions of 25 participants. Based on this study, seven themes (each with two or more factors) to enhance s-commerce in Saudi Arabia were identified. Finally, future opportunities and challenges are also discussed in detail.