A Comparison of B2C E-Commerce in Developing Countries

This article surveys the challenges of conducting business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce in developing countries. Low credit card penetration and poor delivery systems are widely viewed as serious problems for B2C e-commerce in developing countries. An investigation of payment and delivery methods provided by B2C sites in Russia, India and Latin America is reported. Similarities and differences in how sites from the three regions handle payment and delivery are presented. The results of an examination of e-commerce sites show that sites from all areas used a variety of payment and delivery methods, many of which are not highly used in the USA. The results also show that there are some regional differences in how e-commerce sites have chosen to deal with low credit card penetration and poor delivery systems. The implications for practice and future research are discussed.