The Adoption of E-Commerce by Overseas Sindhis: An Empirical Study

Sindh along the lower delta of Indus River is one of the world´s most ancient civilizations. Over the last six decades, people of Sindh have gone all over the world and have been successful in all fields of life. In order to maintain Sindhi environment in their homes, they have to acquire various things related to Sindh from various countries. In the past, it was a quite difficult task however, with e-commerce this task can be done with a click of button on the computer. Thus, the purpose of this study is to find out how Sindhis living abroad have adopted e-commerce and what are the factors that are influencing the adoption of this technology? For this purpose a survey was conducted all over the world. The results indicate that income level; education level and exposure to the Internet were significant predictors in explaining the rate of adoption of e-commerce by overseas Sindhis. However, contrary to general beliefs, this study showed that the gender and the age are not important factors for the adoption of e-commerce by overseas Sindhis. This could be due to the fact that regardless of their gender and age, Sindhis living abroad are eager to use e-commerce to acquire Sindhi items so that they can maintain Sindhi type homes abroad and preserve their culture and heritage