THE IMPACT OF NATIONAL CULTURE ON ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORK USAGE AND ELECTRONIC COMMERCE TRANSACTIONS

Abstract

Computer-based social networks have become the new phenomenon in the Internet era. Millions of people are networking and exchanging contents. In the real world, one may have a very small number of friends to exchange with, whereas, in the virtual world, virtual fiends, who sometimes may convert to real friends are counted by hundreds if not thousands. Previous research has largely documented the impact of national culture on information technology usage. It has been clearly noticed that the number of social network users in the Arab world has always been dramatically increasing in the last decade. This paper presents the theoretical explanation of this phenomenon and argues that the high power distance and collectivist dimensions of the national culture in the Arab world are major factors which may increase social network usage. However and paradoxically, we argue that the same factors may pose barriers to electronic commerce business transactions in the Arab world. Arabs prefer to conduct transactions in face to face mode and not in the online world.