The Implication and Effectiveness of E-Marketing in the Kingdom of Bahrain Presentation

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Table of Contents

Background Introduction & problem statement

Though Bahrain business communities have been under pressure to effectively adopt and implement e-marketing and e-commerce to compete globally, no suitable standardized framework has existed to support businesses and consumers in this industry.
There exists a problem of lack of guiding rules and facilities to govern the online business transactions. No research has been conducted to assess the effectiveness/status of e-commerce in Bahrain as is with other developing countries.

Study is important in assisting Bahrain regulators and policy makers to identify suitable measures for enhancing growth in this developing nation.
Thesis will also improve cooperation amongst Bahrain scholars, regulators and policy makers by identifying gaps and suggesting measures for improvements.

To investigate the effectiveness of the implication of Bahrain’s e-commerce based on the companies’ and customers’ responses and expectations and go ahead to recommend improvements.

To scrutinize the roles of e-commerce in Bahrain.
To survey and illustrate the objectives and attitudes of customers and businessmen with regard to e-commerce in Bahrain.
To recommend suitable and sustainable standards of adopting and implementing e-commerce in the country.
To examine the issues hampering the successful adoption of e-commerce in Bahrain.

Commend on the extent to which the existing theoretical concepts have facilitated the use of ICT to support e-business operations in Bahrain.
What kind of e-business models take place in Bahrain?
How best have the national rules influenced e-marketing in Bahrain?
What are the challenges/barriers facing the adoption and implementation of e-marketing in Bahrain?

Study limited its coverage to the following areas:
- Comparing how banks and other financial institutions in Bahrain have tried to effect online-banking systems.
- Narrowing on how Bahrain government has adopted electronic operations.
- Researcher will narrow down on the aspects of e-marketing in Bahrain: the available theoretical concepts, their effectiveness, infrastructure plus current regulatory framework.

Little timeframe to cover the many aspects of the topic.
Inadequate funding may have led to little coverage on some sections.
Past findings gave little attention to the case of Bahrain.
The quality of data from uncooperative study respondents may have lowered the quality of findings on some aspects.

Background Introduction & problem statement

This chapter reviewed past findings in the following ways:
- The conceptual framework looked at the definitions and the components of e-marketing.
- Here, the author discovered the relationship of the 4 major concepts as demonstrated in the figure below.
- From the figure, e-business is the broader concept that accommodates the other three.
The author reviewed literature on the processes/stages of e-marketing: think, create, engage, optimize.
The researcher also reviewed the following models that formed the e-marketing strategy: auction, merchant, manufacturer, affiliate, advertising, infomediary, subscription, brokerage, virtual communities and logistics model.
The review also looked at the following components of Bahrains legislative framework: Electronic Commerce Decree No. 28/2002, intellectual property and e-government law (see illustration below).

Literature

This section described the important processes carried out to achieve the project aim:

This being a descriptive research, the author adopted quantitative research approach.

The business community plus their clients in Manama formed the study population.
Random sampling was used to select 100 respondents.

Primary sources: questionnaires were emailed. Phone interviews were also done to few respondents.
Secondary sources: Documentary sources e.g. directories, internet and government reports were used.

Researcher experienced challenges with uncooperative respondents, the shortage of electronic data on e-marketing in Bahrain amongst others.

Software applications such as MS Excel were used to draw summarized findings of summarized figures for easy understanding.

Research methodology

Most businessmen in Bahrain had spent a considerable amount of time and accumulated experience.
Most respondents had integrated ICT to improve their e-business operations.
Most firms had gone online; through static websites. This hindered electronic transactions.
Most customers identified flexibility as being the most valuable benefit of e-commerce.
Challenge of high costs of implementing the technological infrastructure was the main reason for the slow growth of e-commerce in Bahrain.
Failure to use any proper business model; thus limiting growth of e-commerce sector.
Online buying and selling were the most preferred forms of e-business.
Most respondents said legislation had not highly influenced the e-market.
Most people used search engines such as Google Trader for e-marketing.
Most companies preferred carrying out their won market research in developing e-marketing strategies.
Most people called on the government to fund the growth of the e-commerce as well as the recruitment of skilled manpower.

Presentation & Analysis of Findings

Conduct workshops or open discussion forums to sensitize Bahrain people on benefits of engaging in e-commerce.
Request the government to improve ICT pathway/infrastructure as well enable free flow of information.
Incorporate more ICT courses in the educational programme.
Recruit qualified and skilled manpower to help implement e-commerce.

Study demonstrated that despite Bahrain being well endowed with lots of resources, it had made little progress in implementing e-business. This has been created by a number of limiting factors including lack of cooperation amongst businesses, little knowledge on ICT and censorship laws that restrict free flow and sharing of online information.
It is therefore important that the proposed recommendations be implemented to enable the growth of e-business in this Kingdom.

Recommendations and Conclusions

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