Social commerce in Qatar

Social commerce provides business owners with a platform to advertise, market and sell their products online at the least possible cost. It offers entrepreneurs a new way to monitor and manage their businesses on a digital screen, significantly reducing the cost of the initial investment that comes with establishing a physical store-front.In Qatar, small businesses started to focus on social commerce as their main platform in business to sell products and services.

File:Online-store-3153783 1280.jpg

Social Commerce

History of Commerce in Qatar

Commerce in Qatar, started with business transactions on forums and discussion boards. These forums provided an online space for people to come together and exchange goods and services locally and exchanged phone numbers as the main source of communication. After the newer trends of e-commerce came out, some businesses tried to keep create official online websites but failed due to the requirements and registration that had to be done for the Government. It is not only inconvenient, expensive and halts business. Mostly, there is a huge resistance in the Qatari population to pay online as they are sensitive towards their credit card information. The lack of infrastructure to support E-commerce does not help with this at all, as local banks should be involved and offer secure and convenient portals, enhance security issues and develop other services to help ease the process to utilize electronic commerce. With that entrepreneurs noticed the huge use of social networks and used that as a channel to market their business and sell their products & services. Social commerce offers a cheaper, easier, faster, more active way to conduct business. Entrepreneurs in Qatar are now taking their business to the buyers-- to where they socialize and to where they are most active. In order to decide on where to start their businesses, it is important to understand the user habits in social networks in Qatar.

Social Networks in Qatar

In 2013, surveys have been conducted to find out the internet usage and social networks use in Qatar. These surveys were carried out by Northwestern University in Qatar and ICTQatar in efforts to better understand users’ behavior in the Middle East and specifically Qatar. According to ICTQatar report, “87% of Internet users access social networking at least once a month in Qatar, an increase over prior years.” While conducting this research, they also find out that there is a huge interest in mobile-based services in Qatar. ICTQatar and Northwestern University split the population into Qatar different segments including Qatari Nationals, Arab expats, and Asian Expats. The findings of these studies are summarized in this section. In terms of Arab expats: on average of all age groups almost 100% have internet access, 85% have access to the internet through smartphones. Focusing on social networks use, Arab expats in Qatar use social networks in the following order: (95%) Facebook, (49%)Twitter, (12%) Instagram, (7%) LinkedIn, and (7%) Google+.

In terms of Asian expats: 99% have access to the internet, 84% have internet access to the internet through smartphones. Focusing on social networks use, Arab expats in Qatar use social networks in the following order: (94%) Facebook, (27%) Twitter, (12%) Google+, (5%) LinkedIn, and (5%) Instagram.

In terms of Qatari nationals statistics: on average of all group ages 98.5% of Qataris have access to the internet, 95% have access to the internet through smartphones, and 74% use social networks through smartphones. Focusing on social media use, in 2013, Qataris use social networks in the following order: (65%) Facebook, (65%) Twitter, (48%) Instagram, (3%) Flicker, (2%) of LinkedIn and (1%) MySpace. However, recent studies in 2014 stated that Instagram is the most used social network by Qatari.

Use of Social Commerce in Qatar

The most popular social network application utilized by Qatari nationals is Instagram with more than 65% active Qatari users, a recent study conducted by ictQatar revealed that “Qataris use Instagram disproportionately more than any other group in Qatar”. Instagram is unique in comparison to other other social media networks because it was designed as a smartphone mobile app. Instagram carries over 800 million users worldwide. It focuses on sharing photos and short videos with family and friends. The reason why Instagram has gained extensive popularity is that people behavior in acquiring information has changed, users now tend to skim and scan over information until they find something of interest. Users look for micro videos which are short 5-15 second and visual information over text, etc. Instagram understands that mobile applications have a limited screen estate on a mobile platform. Therefore Instagram successfully provided an application that is image-centric with minimal text, offering the capabilities to upload to a limit of 15-second videos that can be uploaded easily using minimal internet capacity. In terms of commerce, Forbes called Instagram “the world’s most powerful selling tool.”

Challenges & Trends

The future of commerce in Qatar is unpredictable. It is likely that local businesses will continue to utilize modern technology to enhance the promotion of their products and services. Continuously, the sellers should adapt to the market trends and establish a strong presence on new social media platforms. This will help keep the business updated with new technological advances. Many businesses benefitted from these social network platforms, and the technology is rapidly changing. Thus,offering new ways for interaction as social networks get bypassed by newer social media advancements that appear.

Social Commerce in Qatar

This article "Social commerce in Qatar" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Social commerce in Qatar. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---