The development of e-commerce: the emerging virtual ... - CiteSeerX

Introduction

The development of e-commerce: the emerging virtual context within Egypt Sherif Kamel and Maha Hussein

The authors Sherif Kamel is an Associate Professor of MIS at the American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt. Maha Hussein is a Postgraduate Student in the Department of Information Systems, London School of Economics, London, UK. Keywords Electronic commerce, Egypt, Internet, Globalization, Information technology, Developing countries Abstract The information and communication technology evolution is aggressively affecting the business world in the twentyfirst century. The magnitude of change in business development from a global perspective, unconstrained by time or distance barriers, has reached both developed and developing nations. E-commerce currently represents 2 per cent of the global business transactions but promises to dominate the business environment during the course of the twenty-first century. The successful presence of e-commerce through the Internet has helped create low cost and high efficiency for product and service sales through a more dynamic and interactive venue of opportunities where the world becomes the marketplace. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.mcbup.com/research_registers The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emerald-library.com/ft

Logistics Information Management Volume 14 . Number 1/2 . 2001 . pp. 119±126 # MCB University Press . ISSN 0957-6053

Egypt, as a developing country with an economy in transition, has invested in building its information technology infrastructure. In 1994, the Internet became a priority for the government and the public sector as a tool for business and socioeconomic development. This paper explains the role of the Internet in Egypt and demonstrates the development of e-commerce and concludes with a description of the challenges facing e-commerce diffusion in Egypt. Throughout different eras, changes that drive the global economies have always been affected by industries, setting the pace for socioeconomic development. In the nineteenth century the railroads industry was the main growth engine; during the 1960s and 1970s manufacturing was the key for prosperity; in the 1980s, the boom was in the service industries such as health care and retailing, marking the shift from manufacturing to service economies. During the 1990s, information and communication technology became an important platform in planning for socioeconomic development, leading to the development of the Internet and the formulation of the information highway (Kamel, S., 1995), bringing the world closer to a new digital age integrating information and communication technology and leading to the development of the global information society that is driven by information dissemination and knowledge acquisition and management. Today, the Internet is a major driving force of change in the global marketplace (Kamel, S., 1995), promising to improve the way people live, work and study. The rate of Internet growth has been remarkable by doubling every year since 1988 (Cerf, 1999) with estimated further growth rates, as the world becomes more aware of the opportunities enabled by the Internet as a vital source of information and knowledge at the individual and organizational levels (Kamel, S., 2000). In 1985, Egypt started to invest in its information infrastructure, targeting the build-up of its national information infrastructure to support in the development process. From 1985 until 1995, a publicprivate sector partnership had a remarkable impact on the build-up of Egypt’s information infrastructure (Kamel, S., 1995) where

119

E-commerce: the emerging virtual context within Egypt

Logistics Information Management Volume 14 . Number 1/2 . 2001 . 119±126

Sherif Kamel and Maha Hussein

hundreds of informatics projects and centers were established in various government, public and private sector organizations (Kamel, S., 1998), which had an invaluable effect on building an information technology literate society capable of leading Egypt into the information age. This millennium promises to bring to the world more innovations, more opportunities, but also more challenges. Therefore, countries around the world, including Egypt, need to be prepared for a more competitive global marketplace that is timely, accurate and information driven. The global Internet market today is estimated to have around 150 million users coupled with 44 million hosts in more than 130 countries. During the next decade, this figure is estimated to reach over 500 million users. Although the exponential growth of the Internet may sound impressive, the figures are less dazzling with a world population of six billion. Furthermore, over 75 per cent of the computers linked to the Internet are in the USA, while Europe has a smaller fraction and the emerging economies lag further behind. However, Internet users in developing countries only constitute a small percentage of total global users. Thus, while an estimated 3.1 per cent of the population in high-income countries uses the Internet, a small fraction of the population in lowincome countries does so. Thus, the current Internet access distribution needs to be redressed, especially with regard to the developing world, and more appropriate tools and applications need to be developed so that members of different societies can benefit from the digital revolution. The Internet is revolutionizing information and communication technology, with direct impacts on the emergence of a global information society by establishing new concepts for human communication that affect economies and societies worldwide. Therefore, it represents both a challenge and an opportunity to the developing world, where the Internet has the potential to be socially beneficial in issues such as economic growth, education, and business development. It can help in alleviating poverty, improving access to health care, conserving and fairly distributing resources, and strengthening participation in the decision-making processes where the success of the Internet can be measured by its accessibility and contribution to social

progress. It represents a dynamic model for the information society. However, people in many developing countries are not prepared for the new technologies. Hence, there is a need for awareness creation among the people and readiness by governments and public authorities to assume their responsibilities and diffuse various information society concepts to avoid the risk of creating classes of information haves and have-nots. Globalization of markets and strategies, and the increasing mobility of capital and knowhow now characterize the business and economic process worldwide. The movers and shakers behind this change are the innovative global information and communication technologies, with many implications on trade and business. Therefore, one needs to address the opportunities the Internet and its various engines have in store for Egypt. Such an issue compares with that which occurred more than 100 years ago, when the world’s economy evolved from an agricultural society to an industrial society. Had it not made this shift, Egypt would have been left behind, unable to survive in the New World order (Kamel, S., 2000). Similarly, the Internet, through e-commerce, brings about the same type of decision, where it provides unprecedented opportunities for increasing trade, promoting investment, facilitating business transactions, providing a larger and more varied market and supplying an unparalleled marketing tool. E-commerce carries strong business and socioeconomic implications for the Egyptian citizens and firms and provides many opportunities to access global markets.

Internet in Egypt Internet services in Egypt started in 1993 through a 9.6K link between the Egyptian Universities Network and France. In 1994, the Egyptian domain was divided into four major areas. The academic sub-domain, via a gateway at the Supreme Council of Universities, which provides services for universities and schools, whilst the scientific sub-domain located at the Academy of Scientific Research serves research institutes and centers. As for the commercial and government sub-domains, they were established through a partnership between the Information and Decision Support Center

120




(IDSC) and the Regional Information Technology and Software Engineering Center (RITSEC) (Kamel, T., 1999). To promote and diffuse the Internet technology among the society, IDSC and RITSEC provided free Internet access for public and private corporations, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and professionals from 1994 to 1996 which, as a policy, helped in boosting the rate of growth of Internet users across the nation, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises (Mintz, 1998). In 1996, the government privatized the Internet services and 12 Internet service providers started operations. In September 2000, there are more than 400,000 Egyptians using the Internet served by 60 Internet service providers all across the country (www.mcit.gov.eg). In order to develop local content on the Internet, IDSC and RITSEC began implementing the Egyptian Information Highway Project in 1995 with the objective of making the Internet more relevant and appealing to Egyptians (www.highway.idsc.gov.eg). The project seeks to accelerate growth by promoting electronic dissemination of information, establishing information highways in key sectors of the economy, contributing towards a wide access of information, supporting the development of secure online databases, and training people to establish the national information highway (Hashem and Ismail, 1998). Pilot information networks of the project were launched over the last few years in priority sectors such as trade, culture, tourism, health care, education and local administration (Kamel, S., 1995). At the private sector level, ISPs have differentiated themselves, based on target clients and developed information materials according to these market segments, which led to the emergence of a large number of virtual magazines and newspapers and could be accredited for the boom in electronic publishing. Additionally, non-profit organizations, ranging from business and professional associations to economic research institutions and research centers, have also developed and published content about business and socioeconomic development in Egypt. Electronic publishing includes information about investment opportunities, financial markets and services, infrastructure development as well as research

studies and indicators about different sectors in the economy (Kamel, T., 1999). The growth of the Internet in Egypt, which takes the lead among the countries of the region, in terms of both number of users and Internet service providers, is a reflection of the increasing demand for Internet-related services in Egypt. This was primarily due to the falling prices of personal computers and the decreasing prices for Internet subscriptions (Heikal, 1998). ISPs are primarily competing on the basis of price and are mostly sector-focused, such as offering corporate solutions, establishing Internet cafes and developing e-commerce solutions. In general, Internet user groups could be divided into three categories: the academic community (20 per cent), the government and the public sector community (5 per cent) and the business community, which includes 75 per cent of the total number of users (Mintz, 1998).

The emergence of e-commerce In an effort to accelerate its business and socioeconomic process, Egypt has formulated a national plan outlining its vision to prepare itself for a more competitive and a more global market environment that is enabled by the information age, through investing in the build-up of a comprehensive e-commerce infrastructure. The long-term objectives of the plan aim at formulating a framework for ecommerce, coherent with national policies and compatible with the global market (Kamel, S., 2000). E-commerce promises to offer enormous opportunities for the market, with implications on labor where new employment potentials will focus on information-based and value-added services that can have an impact on the growth of business and industry in Egypt (Gentile, 1999a). It is estimated that e-commerce will generate around US$3.2 trillion of revenue by 2003 (Cerf, 1999), representing a window of opportunities for developing countries, and Egypt has been undergoing an invaluable effort in that direction to capitalize on the possible opportunities presented by e-commerce. During the last couple of years, there has been a clear interest in Egypt to diffuse e-commerce among the business community, shown by moving to the Internet to market

121




and promote their ideas, products and services. For example, several businesses have started its online presence. These businesses are mainly targeting online consumers, allowing them to order over the Internet; however, cash on delivery modality still pertains (Heikal, 1999). There are greater opportunities for e-commerce dissemination in Egypt with a focus on business-to-business as opposed to business-to-customers opportunities, mainly in the banking and financial sector. Moreover, the government has invested time and effort in making national economic information available on the Internet. For example, the State Information Service (www.sis.gov.eg) includes information on investment, economic growth, foreign trade, agriculture and irrigation, industry, energy, transportation and tourism among others. IDSC publishes its monthly economic bulletin online (www.economic.idsc.gov.eg), which includes key economic indicators reflecting the performance of the economy. Research centers such as the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies, an independent organization (www.eces.org.eg), publishes its researches, reports and findings online. On the business side, there are a number of firms that provide information online such as products catalogs, promotional information and interactive business services such as information about trading, traders, banks, exporters and importers (Mintz, 1998).

E-commerce profile in Egypt In October 1997, the Internet Society of Egypt E-commerce Committee (ISE/E2C) was established to catalyze and build awareness on e-commerce in Egypt. The committee co-organized the first national seminar on e-commerce in Egypt in 1998, in order to bring together key players in the areas of e-commerce from the government and business to discuss crucial national issues. ISE/E2C also developed several pioneer issue papers, which worked as a basis for the declaration of Egypt’s e-commerce initiative that was later declared by the Ministry of Trade. Currently, a lobbying process is taking place with key decision makers from the government and the private sector in order to promote e-commerce among the industry and

the business community (Hashem and Ismail, 1998). Companies working in e-commerce are still laying the foundations and venturing on their first projects in the field. In mid-1998, it was accounted that only ten Web sites offered some level of transactional back office and clearance mechanism that provided some form of Internet enabled acquisition of goods and services. This figure is gradually increasing now to a few hundred Web sites; the boom was mainly in the second quarter of 2000. These companies vary between providing either B2C or B2B transactions. From the business-to-consumer side, most commercial sites in Egypt provide presence and cataloging level e-commerce. Companies therefore use the Internet as a promotion or marketing tool, not as an online sales tool, which leads experts to consider B2C in Egypt as still in the pre-mature stage. However, there are a few representative examples of B2C commerce that vary from selling flowers, Egyptian artifacts and Arabic software, to educational courses and tourism promotion and information sites (Heikal, 1999). From the business-to-business side, it is important to note that 57 per cent of the business transactions in Egypt remain within government operations. Therefore, the government holds a strong potential to be a B2B prospect. Yet the number of e-commerce attempts from the government potential in comparison to the local private commercial business is negligible. Nonetheless, there have been several e-commerce projects on the B2B level, which are still in the preliminary phase of operation. For example, the Egyptian Aluminum Company, which is one of the largest public enterprise sector companies in Egypt and which produces 1 per cent of the world’s aluminum, processes its requests for proposals over the Internet. Also, there is the Capital Exchange Project, which addresses stock trading over the Internet and which links the trading community of brokers with potential investors around the world; providing a better mechanism for trading in the Egyptian stock market. Finally, a number of banks have currently taken initiatives to incorporate remote banking, intranet banking and home banking on different levels (El Nawawy and Ismail, 1999).

122

E-commerce: the emerging virtual context within Egypt Sherif Kamel and Maha Hussein


E-commerce cases from Egypt E-commerce is still an infant industry in Egypt and a few businesses are experimenting with the possibilities of expanding their business online and promoting their products globally. There are a lot of problems that hinder the development of business-toconsumer and business-to-business transactions, some of which include the limited number of credit card holders in Egypt, the cultural orientation towards using digital money, and the cautious development of the online banking industry in Egypt (El Nawawy and Ismail, 1999). In 1999, a group of developers got together and created the first online fast food takeout ordering service in Egypt (www.otlob.com). The word ‘‘otlob’’ is a literal translation of the verb ‘‘to order’’ in Arabic. The Web site comprised a large number of food takeouts, which did not have their own Web sites. The Web site was arranged geographically and required a login procedure for future simplicity. The ordering services received the request from the clients and then were channeled to the takeout for delivery and on the spot payment. This project was quite popular and accommodated for the cultural adaptation of online payments. The idea was to create an online society that becomes accustomed to daily interaction with the technology. A second project is www.nilemart.com, which is an online vendor of Arabic music, books and videos. Nilemart first started off with the same business modality as www.otlob.com Its site was interactive and the order was put through to it directly, with a promise of two to three days’ delivery and payment collection. Recently and with the emergence of a number of online banking facilities, Nilemart accepts online payment using Visa and Master Card. This move is expected to make the business cycle easier and more attractive, pending the availability of a critical mass that possesses credit cards and who are willing to use them, based on the fact that e-commerce by default is a credit card-driven medium. Respectively, as people in Egypt are not adamant users of plastic-forpayment, e-commerce proponents must also persuade computer users to become credit card consumers (Gentile, 1999b). Moreover, there are a number of virtual malls developed or being developed in Egypt. However, a few of them are not true virtual

malls. Some of them sell you the idea of buying their wares, but do not give the buyer the ability to purchase them online, and the actual product is not delivered to the buyer’s door pre-paid with a credit card, as the technology for this is still developing in Egypt and the security issues are numerous; however, the return on investment is outstanding (Scarborough, 1999). For example, the Khan El-Khalili merchant mall (www.thekhan.com) where hand-made Egyptian items are sold. Also, another example for online services could be the recruitment centers that have emerged as an online business in Egypt since late 1999, and today there are five major companies that have strong presence on the Web, one of which is www.CareerEgypt.com that aims for matching talent with opportunity. It is considered the nation’s first online recruitment site. It is trying to re-invent the way job hunters and companies create the perfect employment match. CareerEgypt is a free service that is dedicated to matching the right skills with the right opportunities via an online database of re´sume´s and corporate clients. The company was launched in September 1999 and it has already over 500 companies subscribed, paying annual fees, and receiving thousands of re´sume´s (Gentile, 1999a), generating high return on investment for the company and directly reflecting on the traffic generated on the site and the booming valuation of its shares. E-commerce could enable Egypt to experience a more open economy and increase its competitive advantage worldwide. Such an opportunity holds a lot of promise for the economic development of Egypt, providing it with new opportunities for penetrating international trading markets, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, which lack the resources enabling them to promote themselves globally. Egypt can also benefit, through e-commerce, in sectors such as tourism, entertainment, education and health, implying many business and socioeconomic results at both the individual and the organizational levels. Today, there are over 4,000 Web sites in Egypt from which 350 are indexed as commercial Web sites. These figures have been continuously rising since the second quarter of 2000. E-commerce represents a dynamic model for the information society. However,

123




consumers will need to become familiar with information technology for communicating and ordering goods and services electronically through training and awareness creation and readiness by governments and private firms to avoid the risk of creating classes of information haves and have-nots. E-commerce will have a profound impact on the society at large. It is perceived that it is just a matter of time before every established and emerging company has to move into an online, realtime business environment; the question is: what will this new era of digital commerce mean for Egypt? E-commerce challenges There are a number of challenges that face the growth of e-commerce in Egypt, with many issues to be resolved and questions to be answered if it wants to realize the desired objectives from the Internet as a tool for business and socioeconomic development and transform these challenges into opportunities. Awareness is a critical challenge for e-commerce implementation in Egypt from the consumer and the corporate perspectives. Consumer awareness such as response to the provision of Internet services indicated that it is affordable, but the market does not perceive its added value at this point. From a corporate perspective, the situation is largely the same, though there have been a number of attempts from the business sector to embark on e-commerce. However, many of them are yet to conceive the business advantages of e-commerce. It may be worth mentioning that this is about to change, as some banks are moving towards online banking. Moreover, recently there has been a growing appreciation for the Internet capacities among businesses, government, non-profit organizations and professionals. There is also a growing number of people that are being trained on the use of the Internet in such institutions as the Regional IT Institute located in Cairo (www.riti.org), and considered one of the main training institutions in Egypt with respect to Internet applications. The institute has trained over 3,000 government and private sector employees through 190 training courses since April 1994. The institute is also the cofounder of the Cairo Internet Conference and Exhibition (www.cainet.org.eg) in 1996, becoming today the main Internet event for the community in the region (Kamel, T.,

1999). The Conference had an average attendance of 1,200 per annum in its first five years from different private, public and government sector organizations, contributing comprehensively to the awareness of the Internet in Egypt (Kamel and Hussein, 1999). Market size is relatively small with around 80,000 paying subscribers and a total of 400,000 Internet users, which could be one of the main challenges that are hindering business-to-consumer e-commerce. Respectively, the current consumer base discourages commercial efforts to produce venues for the consumer to buy, sell or in any way commercially transact. Therefore, efforts are currently under way to move from the pull strategy based on demand to a push strategy based on the provision of viable electronic commerce sites in the local language (Arabic) to break down the language barrier and to attract potential individual and corporate customers to transact over the Internet (El Nawawy and Ismail, 1999). E-commerce infrastructure is not yet fully in place. The non-existence of an appropriate and secure e-commerce enabled environment is a disincentive. Moreover, there is a lack of a certificate authority in Egypt, that is crucial, due to the need for a trusted, impartial, transparent and knowledgeable third party that will offer expert advice to the Egyptian legal system in related cases, and that can work on raising awareness within the community, seeking the development of consumer as well as institutional bodies related to e-commerce (El Nawawy and Ismail, 1999). Telecommunications Infrastructure is growing but still lagging behind in terms of being capable of providing the required infrastructure for the Internet. It is perceived that the cost of the telecommunications services is rather expensive, leading ISPs not being able to afford to buy large amounts of bandwidth, which directly reflects on the usability of the Internet. This leads to the fact that there is a lack of a reliable and secured backbone, widely accessible and fully interconnected high-speed network that will guarantee the availability of bandwidth sufficient for the requirements of ecommerce. Moreover, tele-density is an issue with only seven telephone lines to every 100 people in Egypt, which is another challenge for Internet diffusion among the society.

124




However, Telecom Egypt, recently privatized, plans to add 1,000,000 telephone lines every year for the coming five-year plan (Kamel, S., 2000). Financial services are a strong component of e-commerce. The total number of credit cards in Egypt is less than 200,000, while there are 102 licensed banks in Egypt (El Nawawy and Ismail, 1999). This low number is attributed to the lack of existing culture and awareness of the usage of credit cards, and the consumer market is still in the initial phase of credit card services provision for the endconsumer. On the other hand, trust for credit cards is still limited. Hence, as credit cards are the primary method of settling consumer transactions on the Internet, the upper limit potential for consumer e-commerce is bound to the number of credit card holders. Moreover, one of the main challenges is that the support for Internetbased transactions is non-existent from the Central Bank of Egypt, which has refused to be the designated bank for national settlements for credit cards. Therefore, there are many cases of local companies using credit card validation services located abroad to guarantee financial transactions. Currently, there is a project to provide online financial information related to money and capital markets available on the Internet and efforts are also under way to create a support network among Egyptian banks (El Nawawy and Ismail, 1999). Social and cultural issues are highly considered and respected; thus commercial relationships are shaped around social conditions and cultural attitudes. For example, the lack of trust in electronic means of payment remains as a challenge for e-commerce diffusion (Kamel and Hussein, 1999). Moreover, the resistance to change, including technology, is strongly affecting the decision-making process of businessmen and reliance on previously well mastered business processes always prevails and is more encouraged. Finally, the majority of managing directors and CEOs of Egyptian firms were not raised in the information age; IT is not part of their daily routine nor are they willing to appreciate its added value. This will change in the coming few years due to the different expertise infrastructure at the middle management level. For e-commerce to prevail in Egypt, as a developing country, there are a number of

actions that need to take place. It is perceived that these actions need to be coordinated between the government and the private sector. The actions and processes include the following: . providing transparency in policy development and implementation by the government is a must to be able to create the necessary enabling e-commerce environment; . collaboration between national and international organizations can help build the infrastructure enabler for e-commerce; and . the government role should provide a solid environment for e-commerce to grow including its infrastructure, legal and consumer components that are driven by markets and not burdened with extensive bureaucracy, regulation, taxation or censorship.

Conclusion There are a number of issues that need to be resolved for the realization of fully fledged e-commerce in Egypt. That would include: encouraging and facilitating business associations to educate, coordinate and motivate the community to embark on e-commerce; investing in human resources development with regard to e-commerce in the private sector and the government; liberalizing the telecommunications infrastructure to develop a competitive advantage in both local and international markets; enabling financial services through establishing a solid credit system to furnish the appropriate environment for e-commerce; encouraging the use of Arabic content on the Internet to attract local and Arab customers for e-commerce purposes; and reducing Internet related costs (Kamel, S., 2000). The Internet is proving to be one of the most powerful amplifiers of business and socioeconomic development. It is becoming an online repository of all that the global society has achieved across eras; therefore, it has to be affordable to reach the societies in developed and developing countries while remaining unrestricted and unregulated, and has to be simple to reach the haves and havenots (Kamel and Hussein, 1999). The Internet has to be freed from incompatible laws that hinder the growth of e-commerce,

125




affect the protection of intellectual property, and stifle freedom of expression and the development of market economies. It also should protect privacy and confidentiality of transactions conducted on the network (Cerf, 1999). E-commerce encompasses a wide spectrum of activities that are dramatically expanding and undergoing radical changes, engendering a wide array of innovative businesses, markets and trading communities, creating new functions and new revenue streams. E-commerce presents enormous potential opportunities for business and socioeconomic development. Its rapid implementation is an urgent challenge for firms, industries and governments. E-commerce represents for the developing world an opportunity to keep pace with the developed world and capitalize on the enormous resources available, making optimum use of the world’s fastest growing information and communication technology on the planet, the Internet. In the light of these issues, this paper presented the concept of the Internet with reflections on the Egyptian experience, the past and the agenda for the future to promote and diffuse the electronic commerce culture in Egypt, aiming at realizing business and socioeconomic development as we approach the twenty-first century.

References Cerf, V. (1999), ``The Internet is for everyone’’, speech to the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference, April.

El Nawawy, M. and Ismail, M. (1999), `Òvercoming deterrents and impediments of electronic commerce in light of globalization ± Egypt, a case in point’’, Proceedings of the 1999 Internet Society Conference, San Jose, CA, June. Gentile, C. (1999a), ``Forging the future of e-commerce’’, PC World Egypt, September. Gentile, C. (1999b), ``Careeregypt.com matching talent with opportunity’’, PC World Egypt, November. Hashem, S. and Ismail, M. (1998), ``The evolution of Internet services in Egypt: towards empowering electronic commerce’’, Proceedings of the Global Marketplace for SMEs Conference, Manchester, November. Heikal, I. (1998), `ÌSPs at a glance’’, PC World Egypt, JulyAugust. Heikal, I. (1999), `Ègyptian Web directories’’, PC World Egypt, December. Kamel, S. (1995), `Ìnformation superhighways ± a potential for socioeconomic and cultural development’’, Proceedings of the 6th International IRMA Conference, Atlanta, GA, USA, 21-24 May. Kamel, S. (1998), ``Building Egypt’s information highway’’, Proceedings of the 31st Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, Big Island, HI, January. Kamel, S. (2000), `Èlectronic commerce in Egypt’’, in Khosrowpour, M. (Ed.), Managing Web-Enabled Technologies in Organizations: A Global Perspective, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA. Kamel, S. and Hussein, M. (1999), `Ìnternet in Egypt: a tool for development’’, Proceedings of the 2nd BITWorld Conference, Cape Town, South Africa, July. Kamel, T. (1999), `Èvolution of the Internet in Egypt’’, Proceedings of the 4th CaiNet Conference, Cairo, 8-10 March. Mintz, S. (1998), ``The Internet as a tool for Egypt’s economic growth’’, An International Development Professionals Inc. Report, October. Scarborough, A. (1999), ``The path to an Egyptian virtual mall’’, PC World Egypt, November.

126

The development of e-commerce: the emerging virtual ... - CiteSeerX

The development of e-commerce: the emerging virtual ... - CiteSeerX

Suggest Documents