Article: E-commerce research in developing countries: a systematic review of research themes, frameworks, methods and future lines of research Journal: International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences (IJIDS) 2022 Vol.14 No.4 pp.399 - 416 Abstract: This paper presents a systematic review of e-commerce adoption research on developing countries with a focus on the classification of literature and their associated themes, frameworks, research methodology for ten years. A total of 151 articles from 35 peer-reviewed journals from 2010-2019 were retrieved and used in the analysis. The findings reveal that the issues of attitude towards e-commerce adoption and governance issues (legal and regulatory policies) have been comparatively neglected, whereas issues of trust and satisfaction have gained much attention. Though there has not been a constant increase in e-commerce research in developing countries over the past ten years, a significant number of published studies used the qualitative approach as a method of inquiry as compared to quantitative and mixed methodologies. Also, the majority of e-commerce studies on developing countries have not been supported by theoretical frameworks and models. As a contribution, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of e-commerce adoption in developing countries showing the trends of research themes, methodologies, and frameworks. Implications for future research were discussed. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: E-commerce research in developing countries: a systematic review of research themes, frameworks, methods and future lines of research

Authors: Frederick Pobee; Thuso Mphela

Addresses: Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Pécs, Hungary ' Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Pécs, Hungary; Faculty of Business, Department of Management, University of Botswana, Botswana

Abstract: This paper presents a systematic review of e-commerce adoption research on developing countries with a focus on the classification of literature and their associated themes, frameworks, research methodology for ten years. A total of 151 articles from 35 peer-reviewed journals from 2010-2019 were retrieved and used in the analysis. The findings reveal that the issues of attitude towards e-commerce adoption and governance issues (legal and regulatory policies) have been comparatively neglected, whereas issues of trust and satisfaction have gained much attention. Though there has not been a constant increase in e-commerce research in developing countries over the past ten years, a significant number of published studies used the qualitative approach as a method of inquiry as compared to quantitative and mixed methodologies. Also, the majority of e-commerce studies on developing countries have not been supported by theoretical frameworks and models. As a contribution, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of e-commerce adoption in developing countries showing the trends of research themes, methodologies, and frameworks. Implications for future research were discussed.

Keywords: e-commerce; developing countries; systematic review; business-to-customer; B2C; e-commerce adoption; research frameworks; research methodologies.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIDS.2022.127460

International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences, 2022 Vol.14 No.4, pp.399 - 416

Received: 25 Jun 2020
Accepted: 13 Dec 2020
Published online: 06 Dec 2022 *

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Title: E-commerce research in developing countries: a systematic review of research themes, frameworks, methods and future lines of research

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