The use of ‘ecommerce’ and ‘social commerce in emerging markets’: Omani female millennials’ experiences

Dynamics of interaction in ‘ecommerce’, ‘social commerce’ and ‘social commerce in emerging markets’

This section explains the interaction differences between the three internet-mediated marketplaces: ecommerce (Figure 1), social commerce (Figure 2) and social commerce in emerging markets (Figure 3). It is thought that it would be useful to establish a clear understanding of the key terms used in the current study and to avoid an unsought overlap in meaning. As explained in the work by Gibreel et al. (2018: 154), in ecommerce, referral tools (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo) and digital advertising work as intermediaries that allow the buyer to search for product information and costs before contacting the seller in the ecommerce site to make an online purchase (Cho and Tansuhaj, 2011; Laudon and Traver, 2009). The buyer also has the option to directly access ecommerce sites.

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Figure 1.

Ecommerce dynamics of interaction.

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Figure 2.

Social media dynamics of interaction.

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Figure 3.

Social media in emerging markets dynamics of interaction.

In social commerce, social media sites (e.g. YouTube) or social networks (e.g. Facebook, Instagram) (Hajli, 2014) are initially used as referral tools to look for product information and costs. Then, the buyer can approach the desired ecommerce site to make an online purchase from the seller. Similarity to ecommerce sites, the buyer can directly buy from the ecommerce site.

However, the buyer in ‘social commerce in emerging market’ does not need a referral tool that eventually leads to making an online transaction. The buyer searches for product information and price on the social network itself, and directly contacts the e-vendor to make an online purchase. Thus, the execution of all the buying stages is performed simultaneously by the buyer without the aid of an intermediatory. The following figures clearly illustrate the interaction dynamics in each internet-mediated marketplace.

Ecommerce and social media in Oman

As this study considers Oman as a case study of an emerging market, this section presents an overview of the status of ecommerce and social media in Oman. It would be crucial for the study to initially identify: the commonly used ecommerce and social media platforms, the types of products purchased and the general motivations for using them. As a handful of research studies have been conducted with regards to the Omani context, this study seeks to offer a fresh and complex perspective on the driving factors that make Omani millennials choose a certain e-retailing platform.

Oman's ranking is among the top 100 countries on B2C ecommerce index, taking the 59^th position (UNCTAD, 2019). The available literature in this area of inquiry shows that Omanis commonly pay for clothing, airline and hotel booking, groceries, cosmetics when they use ecommerce (MasterCard, 2014; Mordor Intelligence, 2019; US Department of Commerce, 2017). Among the reasons for using ecommerce are its perceived ease of use, good customer services and affordability of the products, while issues such as security concerns, having an impersonated shopping experience and failure to touch or see the products with the naked eye are among the factors that affect their buying patterns (Mordor Intelligence, 2019). Popular ecommerce websites used by Omanis are Amazon, eBay, AliExpress and Namshi (Akbar, 2019; Export.gov, 2018; US Department of Commerce, 2017). Among the main considerations when making online purchasing decisions are products’ pricing, exchange policies and online review. Creating user-friendly ecommerce websites, positive comments from other online shoppers and elimination of additional charges are the main suggestions as to how to improve online shopping (MasterCard, 2014). Moreover, Omanis tend to prefer offline shopping to online shopping. They think that offline shopping is ‘more secure’ while online shopping is ‘equally safe’ (Export.gov, 2018).

Oman has 2.5 million active social media users, which represents 51% of the total population (Hootsuite, 2019). According to the most recent survey conducted by The National Center for Statistics and Information (2019), 94% of the Omanis aged 18 and above actively use social media platforms, including Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube. It has been found that the Omanis who have higher education degrees spend a quadruple amount of time (eight hours a day) in comparison with only two hours spent by those who have a high school certificate and below. In terms of gender, women spend more time than men do, averaging seven hours a day as compared to five hours a day spent by males. While the users adopt social media for a variety of purposes, a third of the population (32%) in this survey use social media exclusively for searching and buying products and services. Among the social media platforms that are extensively used for searching for online products and shopping are Instagram (63%). This finding is similar to the results of a recent survey on six Arab countries, in which Qataris, who are also citizens of the GCC, rely on Instagram and Snapchat (60% and 55%, respectively) than any other social media platform (Dennis et al., 2016).

Trust

In online shopping, trust is conceived as ‘a social lubricant’ enabling consumers to make transactions with retailers detached from their immediate network (Jarvenpaa et al., 1999). It is also considered as a ‘catalyst’ for increased commercial transactions between the consumer and the seller since it leads to heightened expectations of satisfaction with the consumers, and thus the adoption of ecommerce sites (Ha and Stoel, 2009; Pavlou, 2003). Trust is a stimulator in mitigating consumers’ perceived risks, and the successful marketing of e-commerce (Bylok, 2022; Connolly and Bannister, 2007; Soleimani, 2022; Zeinab, 2006). E-vendors are expected to abstain from behaving opportunistically in their transactional dealings with the customers (Reichheld and Schefter, 2000). Practices such as unfair pricing, offering inaccurate information, breaching the customer's privacy and an unauthorized use of credit card information are key reasons to make the customers avoid dealing with the ecommerce sites practicing these behaviors (Gefen et al., 2003; Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1996).

Trust is also shown as a key factor for an increased intention to shop online (Bylok, 2022; Farrah Almira et al., 2021; Gefen, 2000; Gefen et al., 2003; Ha and Stoel, 2009; Kim et al., 2009; Pavlou, 2003; Zhang et al., 2020) and for increasing the customers’ intention to purchase online. Pavlou (2003) found that trust directly influences the intention of the customer to make a transaction. Gefen (2000) unveiled that trust and familiarity with eBooks’ sites have an enormous effect on the customers’ intention to purchase books. Zhang et al. (2020) showed that trust is important in alleviating behavioral uncertainty with the e-vender, which leads to an increased sense of control over online transactions and ultimately to have a positive effect in making an online purchase. In another study, Gefen et al. (2003) indicated that trust plays a significant part in making customers return to shop with the e-vendor they purchase their online product from. Corbitt et al. (2003) indicated that trust of ecommerce site is largely impacted by the propensity of buying from a highly perceived trustworthy ecommerce site, the website reputation, and the level of experience in using the ecommerce site. Moreover, the customer's trust with the ecommerce vendor is positively associated with their attitudes towards the vendor, and the positive attitude is strongly linked to the willingness of the customer to make a purchase (Teo and Liu, 2007). Saleem et al. (2017) showed that trust supersedes all other predictors employed in the study and it is a driving force for increasing the intention to purchase airline tickets. In a most recent study, trust is shown to be influenced by the promises of the online shopping platform to deliver good product and service quality, and by the customized products made specifically to meet the customers’ needs (Bylok, 2022).

Service quality

The success and failure of ecommerce is largely dependent on the service quality in online environment (Yang, 2001). Many studies indicated that service quality exemplified in customer support services profoundly influences customers’ attitudes, their purchase decisions and ultimately their satisfaction (Holloway and Beatty, 2008; Jusoh and Ling, 2012; McCloskey, 2004; Rodríguez et al., 2020; Shergill and Chen, 2005; Sheu and Chang, 2022; Wattoo and Iqbal, 2022). However, some other studies yielded different findings. Tsao et al. (2016) examined the influences of ecommerce sites quality on the customers and their loyalty based on their online shopping experiences. It was revealed that e-service quality has a significant positive impact on the perceived value of the relationship between the customer and the seller, which in turn positively affect their online loyalty. Gajewska et al. (2020) predicted that the customers’ higher expectations of the services in e-commerce can potentially increase the trust with the reliability of the services offered by e-commerce sites. The findings by Camilleri (2022) showed that both the electronic services and the quality exhibited in the e-commerce site not only offered good value, but also led to loyal behaviors and satisfaction. Gounaris et al. (2010) found that e-service quality has a direct and indirect positive impact on three behavioral intentions of online shoppers: WoM (i.e. Word of Mouth), site revisit and purchase intention. Saleem et al. (2017) revealed that the relationship between service quality and purchase intention, and customer satisfaction and brand image are positively intertwined. Furthermore, Blut (2016) showed that service quality is not a significant component of e-service quality, and superior service quality is built through website design, security/privacy and fulfilment.

Web design

Web design is vital for judging and predicting quality of the online shopping website (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2003). It encompasses all the components necessary for enhancing the customer experience about the website, including information quality, aesthetic aspects of the website, buying process, website convenience, product selection, price listings, navigation, information search, order processing, appropriate customization and system availability (Rita et al., 2019; Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2003).

Web design can work as a predictive measure for the customer's intent to purchase. According to Ranganathan and Grandon (2002), e-retailers should continuously update the information provided in their online websites as it enormously influences their online sales. They found that high use of multimedia can potentially lead to long download times, which consequently affect online sales. Factors such as the navigation structure, the help section or the site indices are found to have a statistical significance, and thus affecting online sales. Rita et al. (2019) found for their Indonesian participants, web design along with web security/privacy and fulfillment are important in enhancing the quality of services of an online shopping site. Driediger and Bhatiasevi (2019) also demonstrated that when the consumers think of online grocery sites as easy to use, or believe that they are skilled at using it, they tend to think that they are useful. Moreover, Dedeke (2016) showed that web design has a significant influence on purchase intention as well as perceived product quality and perceived information task fit.

Building trust: Interplay between product's price, quality and information

The findings show that female students are generally unsatisfied with their past experiences in using commercial social media accounts. On the other hand, they positively think of ecommerce sites. From the twenty students interviewed, the vast majority, seventeen students, expressed strong preference to buy from ecommerce sites than from social media accounts. They primarily attributed their inclination to ecommerce sites to the exaggerated prices of unexpansive and poor-quality products provided by social media accounts. This opinion was exemplified in the narration by Sara about the misfortunate experience of her friend:

My friend once ordered a purse from an Instagram account, and the picture seemed to show that the purse was replica grade 1. When the purse arrived, the quality of the purse was below my expectations – the threads were loose and protruded. I thought this could have been the worst duplication grade ever! My friend spent a lot of money for the purse (52 U.S. dollars). I believed that the price of that purse could never go beyond 26 U.S. dollars. I do not trust Instagram accounts at all!

Another interesting finding is the mismatch between the product information displayed on commercial social media accounts and how the product appears. The example below illustrates the frustration and resentment of one student at discovering that the products purported to be original by social media accounts’ owners were in fact duplicate and were sold at much cheaper prices than what would be found on ecommerce sites:

One of my friends bought an expensive watch, a Rolex replica. She bought it from a local female seller on Instagram account who priced it at 250 U.S. dollars. The seller claimed that the watch was original. When I went back home, I checked it out on one of the ecommerce websites. I was flabbergasted to know that the watch was priced at less than 125 U.S. dollars. I cannot trust female sellers after this incident! She had the gut to lie to her costumers, and to confidently give them false information. – Shahad, Business Administration

Moreover, the female interviewees underlined that the failure of commercial social media accounts to sell products to meet their expectations was a main reason for their preference to move to ecommerce sites instead. They were surprised at seeing social media accounts sell poor quality products for exorbitant prices while the same products can easily be found on ecommerce sites with reasonable prices. The next opinion echoes this frustration:

I do not think that social media commercial accounts are good for us as buyers. The female sellers who run social media accounts sell the products at a high cost while the same products can also be found on ecommerce sites. You can easily find the same bag on any Chinese ecommerce site. The female sellers exaggerate in raising the price tag of their products. Oftentimes, the prices are three times higher what is displayed on ecommerce sites…they sell cheap items they buy from some ecommerce websites for double or triple the original costs, which is insane! As a buyer you would be surprised to see that the bag was not of good quality duplication. I would expect a good quality product for what I pay. – Sara, Mass Communication

These stories clearly show that female students’ distrust of the commercial social media accounts comes as an outcome of unethical marketing practices: offering false information about products and promoting low quality products for unreasonably expensive prices. These led to feelings of frustration and resentment on the customer's part, and hence amounting to dissatisfaction and distrust of the social media accounts, and ultimately an inclination to shift to ecommerce sites. It is noteworthy that this finding is consistent with the literature on trust, in which it is vital for the e-retailers to avoid acting opportunistically by placing unfair pricing of their unexpensive products and offering wrong product information (Bromiley and Cummings, 1995; Chang et al., 2013; Hoffman et al., 1999; Lee and Turban, 2001). In this way, customer satisfaction level is improved (Ha and Stoel, 2009; Pavlou, 2003), trust can be built and the adoption of an e-retailing platform for online purchase is ensued (Chang et al., 2013; Hoffman et al., 1999; Lee and Turban, 2001). It is interesting to point that this finding runs contrary to the work by Gibreel et al. (2018), where product price did not influence the level of trust.

Delivery costs

An emerging finding from the interviews is that the delivery costs of purchased products on commercial social media accounts defy the customers’ expectations. While the female students assumed that they would pay less money on delivery costs for products sold on social media accounts, e-sellers asked them to pay a high price for delivery costs. The following story elucidates this finding:

I once ordered some books from Saudi Arabia through a commercial Instagram account. The product price was not as expensive as shipping costs. I only paid 8 U.S. dollars for the product, while I paid an extra charge of 31 U.S. dollars for shipment. I thought it should had been the other way around. To add salt to injury, when the local seller managing the Instagram account asked me to pay an extra amount of 10 U.S. dollars to an agent to get my order, I was totally shocked…That was unbelievable! If I were using ecommerce sites for this purchase, that incident would never have happened. In Jollychic, for example, shipping is sometimes free of charge, depending on how many items you buy. Discounts and promotions are available too while I did not see any of those on social media accounts. – Maisa, Business Administration

An interesting discovery from the interviews is that the mechanisms for determining the delivery costs of products on social media accounts seem to disregard the geographical closeness of the customer location in relation to that of the e-seller. In other words, reliance on a transport company to deliver products to far-fetched places guarantees fair reasonable delivery pricing, whereas dependence on local agents appears to result in increased delivery costs. The following excerpt illustrates this:

If I would like to buy a product from a commercial Instagram account from Muscat, 1200 Km away from where I live, I would only need to pay 3 U.S. dollars for the shipping company. However, if I wanted to buy a product from a local Instagram account within my city, I would need to pay 6 U.S. dollars. That is ridiculous! It should be the opposite. Unfortunately, this is the situation here. The logic is that you pay 3 U.S. dollars as the product is delivered by a transportation company, which takes some time to arrive, while you pay 6 U.S. dollars as the product will arrive quickly by a local agent, who does not accept low payment for offering his service. People are certainly unsatisfied with this. The female merchants are fooling us! – Nada, Mass Communication

From these stories, customers’ dissatisfaction of social media accounts, and their propensity to use ecommerce sites stems from the illogical and double-standard approach employed by social media commercial accounts in determining the delivery costs. The logic goes like this: as the local agent would quickly deliver the purchased items in close areas, an expensive commission fee would be required. On the other hand, if products were ordered from a distant city, the commission fee would not be needed as the transport company in that city would deliver the ordered products. For customers, the delivery costs would be cheaper with the transport company than is the case with the agent's delivery costs. However, the order would take some time to arrive.

Customer service quality

In exploring the extent to which the services offered by ecommerce sites and commercial social media accounts are satisfactory, we asked the students how satisfied they were with the quality of the services offered to them. Most of the interviewees, twelve participants, were impressed by the quality of the services given to them by ecommerce sites. Their stories underscored the responsiveness of ecommerce sites in addressing customers’ messages, and their professionalism and in handling customers’ complaints. On the contrary, social media accounts did not seem to offer adequate quality services to the customers. This interesting finding is clearly reflected in the following stories:

One day, I bought a purse from AliExpress, and according to the description, the size was supposed to be large. I went through the commentary section, and most of the comments from the customers were largely positive. When the purse arrived, I found that the size was a bit smaller than what I had expected. When I sent a message to the customer care service to report on the problem, I received a response to my enquiry on the same day – It was very fast! The customer care service staffer first thanked me for purchasing the purse from the store. Then, he explained that the seller accidently misplaced my order with another customer in Oman. The customer service staff asked me to consider the purse as a gift from their part, and he insisted that I keep it with me even if I did not like it – they seemed to care for me, and did not want me to pay twice… In just a week, they refunded me with the full amount, and they apologized for the second time! From this experience, I felt they were truly concerned with the costumers, and above all, they admitted their mistake and apologized for making it, which I felt really good and satisfied about.

It is evident from the narrated stories that the service quality of ecommerce sites received by the female students were of high standards in comparison to that given by commercial social media accounts. From these recounts, the staff exhibited professionalism in their dealings with the customers. They instantly address the customers’ massages and concerns. They also seemed well-trained as they demonstrated empathy. That is, they formally thanked the customers for raising their concerns, apologized for any potential faulty on their part, engaged emotionally with their customers and worked hard to maintain their satisfaction of the purchased products and services. This finding is also in line with (Holloway and Beatty, 2008; Jusoh and Ling, 2012; McCloskey, 2004; Shergill and Chen, 2005). Furthermore, they would sometimes reimburse their customers and give away the wrongly delivered products as gifts. Thus, they guaranteed customer loyalty with their ecommerce sites and the intention to buy from them again. This is congruent with the finding by Tsao et al. (2016); Gounaris et al. (2010); Saleem et al. (2017). It is important to highlight that high quality service is a key reason for the Omani female millennials’ shift to ecommerce, which corroborates the findings of a recent survey on Omanis by Mordor Intelligence (2019). However, the opposite is true with social media accounts, where the e-seller seemed to lack training and professionalism in handling the customers’ concerns of their purchased products. They do not appear to respond on a timely manner, and oftentimes do not respond at all. This led to the assumption that e-sellers were unprofessional and somewhat apathetic.

Local market situation: Product quality and variety

In testing out if the female students’ adoption of ecommerce sites contributed to fulfilling their needs, we discovered that incompetitiveness of the local market in providing the students with a wide-ranging variety of products of high quality appeared to be a real problem. The following examples elucidate this point:

In terms of quality, ecommerce websites provide the customers with high quality products, which is not always guaranteed on social media accounts. In my city, we do not have many shops offering a wide-ranging variety of clothes and shoes for women. Even when it comes to the make-up, which is essential for every woman, we do not have good shops that can cater to our needs. We cannot afford to travel abroad to buy what we want. The local market is too scarce of college-related needs such as book bags. Though we have some shops, they are still limited in number. We just have two main big shops and nothing else! If I want to buy males’ clothes from my brothers locally, it still cannot provide us with all I need… On ecommerce websites, everything and even the home accessories are available. – Reem, Mass Communication

The previous excepts point to the under-developed local market in Oman. The female students seemed dissatisfied and unhappy about lack of product variety that meet their needs, and the unavailability of genuine and branded products in the local market. Their opinions underscored ecommerce sites’ competence to meet women needs. That is, they provided the female students with wide-ranging products that are commonly unavailable and locally inaccessible. This apparently was a driving force for their departure from commercial social media and embracement of ecommerce. From this result, it is inferred that the local market in Oman needs further improvement to provide female millennials with an extensive range of products and to make international brands available.

The role of web design and online payment

In examining the interviewees’ views on the easiness of looking for products using either ecommerce sites or commercial social media accounts, it appears that the design of ecommerce sites overrides that of social media accounts. The female students were impressed by the layout and the filtration feature embedded in the ecommerce sites, which led to quickening their online transactions and shortening the shopping time. On commercial social media accounts, however, it was reported that products were disorganized, and product search and selection process seemed time-consuming and tedious. Reem and Sara expressed their experiences in detail:

Ecommerce websites are well-organized: they divide products department-wise, and on the basis of offering discount deals. You can see that shoes are put in one section. The same applies to clothes and makeups. Under shoe section, for example, there will see different types of shoes put there. You do not have to spend much time searching for an item. If you were after a particular color, you could filter out the color you wanted, and you could find many options. This is very good. The same thing applies to clothes, summer clothes, etc.…On the other hand, everything is lumped together when it comes to social media accounts – no distinct categorization. They do not have a filtration feature if you were after a particular color or size. On Namshi, for example, you can find three products with different sizes. – Reem, Mass Communication

Another interesting finding is that easiness of payment method determines the preferences of the female students to use ecommerce sites over commercial social media accounts as they buy online. They underlined the efficient payment system found in ecommerce sites, which made the payment process effortless. The following quote by this student illustrates this:

You can select your preferred payment options you like. You can pay by your credit card or choose cash on delivery. When you do not have cash or money, you can still make an order online or you can make cash payment. This can be done, especially when the customers do not wish to keep their credit bank details saved onto the ecommerce websites. The options are varied, and they are very easy! When you shop via social media accounts, you need to offer a guarantee to the seller by depositing a certain amount first, and then s/he can send you the ordered product. This is a complicated process, and it does take a long time because the seller will place your order using any of ecommerce websites where the product is sold. It is funny that the seller will act like a mediator. When the products arrive, s/he will send the product, and you will need to pay for the delivery costs. – Nada, Mass Communication

The reported stories underlined the role of e-retailing design and online payment method in making the purchasing experiences of the female students via ecommerce sites effortless in comparison to their experiences with commercial social media accounts. This result is consistent with the work by Kim et al. (2009); Al Zubaidi and Al-Alnsari (2010); Mordor Intelligence (2019). It appears that the web layout of the ecommerce sites and the search tools employed were well-developed and appealing to the students. As each product was placed in a designated section, the students were able to save their time by using the filtration option. This made their shopping experience easy and rewarding. On the other hand, the commercial social media accounts seemed primitive and unprofessionally organized as the students struggled by manually looking for wanted products, which often took a prolonged time. In short, this made them feel satisfied with their use of ecommerce sites (Cho and Park, 2001; Cyr, 2008; Lee and Lin, 2005) but displeased about their use of commercial social media accounts (Hasan, 2016). For payment, the students were given easy payment options, either by credit card or by cash on delivery. Moreover, ecommerce sites offered them a payment guide to instruct them as how to pay online. In doing so, the students saved their bank accounts’ information onto the ecommerce system where their personal and bank account information was protected by a four-digit password. Furthermore, the ecommerce sites would send an email in case of noticing suspicious payment activity. This finding is congruent with (McCloskey, 2004), where she found that payment is one of the main attribute of ease of use when placing an online order. The examples also signal out the influence of ease of use in making the Omani female students to move to ecommerce, which is parallel to the results by Mordor Intelligence (2019) on Omanis. However, these findings contradict the work by Gibreel et al. (2018), where they found that the customer purchase intention from a social marketplace is not affected by the perceived ease of use.

Conceptualizing customer's decision-making to adopt an e-retailing platform

Based on the in-depth analysis of the interviews, three key themes or independent variables (i.e. trust, and product-related and service-related factors) are identified as having a direct influence on the decision-making of the customers to choose to use an e-retailing platform (dependent variable). Product factors include Product Quality (PQ), Product Information (PI), Product Price (PP), Product Variety (PV) and Product Delivery (PD). However, Professionalism (PRO), Empathy (EM), Responsiveness (RES) Marketing (MKT) and User-Friendly Design (UFD) are part of service-related factors. Product quality (PQ), information (PI), prices (PP) provided by an e-retailing platform have a direct bearing on the level of Trust (TRT) with the adoption of the e-retailing platform, which in turn drives the customers’ decision to opt for or decline to use the e-retailing platform. This is clearly summarized in this following model (Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

Customer's decision-making to adopt an e-retailing platform.