E-Commerce in Saudi Arabia: Driving the evolution, adaption and growth
of e-commerce in the retail industry
By Alexandra de Kerros Boudkov Orloff – Sacha Orloff Consulting Group
This report includes a model and other information from an original research done by Dr. Talal Almaghrabi, Director of ITDA
Abstract
The dot.com boom of the 1990’s has been replaced by the e-commerce boom of the millennium. Global e-commerce is going through a phase of exponential growth driven by mobile commerce, social commerce and all digital forms of retail commerce. The success of the first wave of ecommerce mega sites such as Amazon, Ebay and most recently Groupon has demonstrated the viability of the e-commerce business model. This has given rise in the past few years to a number of prolific floatation’s and IPO’s, with the most recent, and perhaps most controversial being the groupbuying site Groupon. The success of the e-commerce model, in prior attributed solely to large companies seeking to diversify their sales point, saw the rise of online-only businesses. Businesses launched with no physical infrastructure such as Net-a-Porter have recently gone through a series of successful acquisitions. Businesses large and small are seeing online commerce as the ideal gateway to high growth, fast sales and access to international markets and customers which would otherwise be impossible from traditional retail units and trade channels.