A trust model for e-commerce in South Africa

  • Authors:

  • Lynette Barnard;Janet Wesson

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Port Elizabeth, P O Box 1600, Port Elizabeth, 6000, South Africa;Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Port Elizabeth, P O Box 1600, Port Elizabeth, 6000, South Africa

  • Venue:
  • SAICSIT '04 Proceedings of the 2004 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries
  • Year:
  • 2004

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

In this paper, the relative importance of trust and usability of e-commerce in South Africa is discussed. In order to investigate these issues, a heuristic evaluation and an empirical evaluation were conducted on a number of South African e-commerce sites. A comprehensive set of e-commerce design guidelines was compiled, which was used to conduct a heuristic evaluation of the selected e-commerce sites. The results of the heuristic evaluation indicated that a number of usability problems exist on the selected sites. The empirical evaluation results also identified a number of usability problems on the selected sites. A correlation analysis between the two sets of results was used to identify a number of e-commerce design guidelines that are of specific relevance to the South African e-commerce market. This paper proposes a trust model for e-commerce in South Africa, based on the guidelines that were identified as being significant for e-commerce in South Africa.