Many studies have focused on the adoption of social commerce (s-commerce) by customers but not by businesses or by microbusinesses. Further, they have investigated this adoption from a researcher's perspective while using quantitative approaches. To fill this gap, the study sheds light on the success of Instagram for microbusinesses (IMB) in an Arab country and highlights the need for more investigation in order to understand this complex phenomenon. In this study, the authors use a qualitative approach to 27 microbusiness cases that adopted Instagram for s-commerce. They use technological innovation theories to successfully identify and classify the drivers and inhibitors of success under different contexts. Hence, they find that the success of IMB in Kuwait is contingent on addressing different technological, organizational, and environmental challenges. Further, they find that Instagram initiatives are still evolving and still need assistance from different stakeholders to overcome several hurdles. This study provides different recommendations that advance the theory and practice.

Despite the plethora of studies investigating different impacting factors on intention to re-use (IR) e-government services, they suffer from two limitations. First, initial studies provide mixed results on the effect of risk perception (PR) on IR. Second, although e-commerce studies have considered PR as a complex construct that encompasses several dimensions to date, none have considered exploring the effect of this complex construct on IR e-government websites. Thus, this study attempts to extend surrogates to such gaps by integrating PR and user trust (UT) in IR e-government using mixed-methods. It involved both a qualitative study (n = 81) to identify perceive risk antecedents and quantitative study (369 users) to build and test the proposed model. Results show that of eight PR factors, only privacy, time, psychological, and overall emerged as negative influencers and as such indirectly affect the IR government, through the mediating role of perceived value and user’s trust. System quality also has an indirect effect on IR through perceived value mediation.

The influence of eWoM use for s-commerce in the context of Arab region remains unexplored. To bridge this gap, this study develops a model for eWoM use for s-commerce post adoption. This model link three antecedents-factors (trust towards other people, trust of internet/Instagram, and perceived risks) to eWoM use for s-commerce through the mediation of perceived enjoyment, perceived value, and customer satisfaction. The model is validated with a large sample of 843 Instagram users using LISREL tool. Research findings revealed that propensity to trust, trust of internet, perceived risk, and perceived value affect use of eWoM through the indirect effect of perceived enjoyment and satisfaction, while perceived value has no direct effect on eWoM. Customer satisfaction was a predominant predictor of eWoM use. The model has relevant contributions and implications for both research and practice.

Many studies have investigated technology adoption in western countries and ignored the Arab region. The available Arab studies focused on the technology adoption model (TAM) and its subsequent variations while leaving important factors such as information quality, user involvement, availability of training and top management support on the success of information systems (IS). Despite that these factors were studied scantly in some past studies, this research attempts to fill this gap and develop a more integrative model of IS success. Results indicated the existence of four critical success factors, three organizational factors (management support, training, user involvement), and an information system factor (information quality), that affect IS success (use and satisfaction). Results found that information quality for the first time mediates the effect of the three organizational factors on IS success, while TAM components (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) have no effect.