The Usability of Management Information Systems Applications

Introduction

The use of management information systems is widespread, and many applications support businesses in operating and managing their processes. A common application of information systems in the business sector is platforms for selling products and services online. Many large online retailers, such as Amazon, use these platforms to support electronic commerce (e-commerce). These huge platforms have a number of access channels, including company websites and mobile applications, and can handle many tasks (i.e., taking orders and payments, performing supply chain management activities and customer relationship management tasks, and handling logistics). According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF (2019), e-commerce is the engine for economic growth in Asia. Certainly, according to Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), the global e-commerce industry is constantly reshaping in response to growing demand and competition by offering new products and services, new ways of engaging customers, new business models, and new approaches to supply chain operations (CITC, 2017).

This study focuses on the e-commerce market in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The Saudi economy has been growing, and developing its e-commerce sector will add fuel to the country’s economic development (CITC, 2017). E-commerce can contribute to the Saudi Vision 2030 in many ways, including economic diversification, increasing investment in the market, creating new jobs, and adding new channels for trade (CITC, 2017). One large project that could provide the needed infrastructure for the KSA is the Saudi Cloud Computing Company, which launched in 2022 (Arabnews, 2022). The e-commerce market has recently had some interesting news, such as the acquisition of Souq.com by Amazon, as well as the KSA’s Public Investment Fund invested in Noon.com (CITC, 2017). In addition, in late 2020, the Saudi Aramco Development Company, a subsidiary of Aramco, formed an alliance with Google Cloud to provide cloud services to Saudi enterprises (Aramco, 2020). Other initiatives in the KSA aimed at increasing the adoption of e-commerce, including developing the connectivity infrastructure, enhancing electronic payments, improving the logistics ecosystem, and raising buyer confidence and awareness (CITC, 2017). The e-commerce market has significant growth potential, and consumers’ huge demand for using mobile applications to buy products and services online is only growing. According to CITC (2021) recent report, almost 98% of smartphone users in the KSA access the Internet from these devices, and 70% of their online activities are related to buying goods and services. The mobile retail applications that are downloaded most frequently in KSA include Noon, Amazon, and Alibaba Express (CITC, 2021).

The objective of this research is to confirm and validate Hoehle and Venkatesh (2015) model and research instrument that companies can use to evaluate the usability of their e-commerce mobile applications, as application usability affects consumers’ intention to continue using the application and consumers’ loyalty to those applications. Hoehle and Venkatesh (2015) stated that research should develop norms for proposed models and instruments by testing them on data from other countries to understand cross-cultural differences. This paper’s contribution can also help developers to design more effective mobile applications and overcome usability problems, as usability issues can be one of the criteria to evaluate these applications. According to Dwivedi et al. (2022), no information technology can be described as successful unless people use it. The next section presents a review of the literature, followed by the research method and results.