Will insta-business be the electronic contemporary bazaar?: An exploratory analysis on electronic commerce in Kuwait

Abstract

Electronic Commerce is shaping many of our daily tasks and, with the introduction to new aspects of social interaction on the net, a new phenomenon is emerging in the arena of e-commerce known as social commerce. Within this new trend in social commerce, Instagram, a simple yet powerful app, is now playing a new role in combining both the advantage of social networks with its design features and capabilities. In this paper we examine how a simple yet powerful picture-based social network app like Instagram is shaping the electronic commerce arena globally, using Kuwait as an example. Instagram has become a major part of most Kuwaiti individual lives, for in Kuwait Instagram is currently an hourly stop instead of a daily one. Instagram transformed from being a voyeuristic tool to becoming a handy shopping outlet. Everything from exotic pets to home car washing and detailing service can be found on Instagram, whose usage in Kuwait is now ubiquitous: from the old widower selling home-cooked traditional dishes to multimillion real estate investment companies. In this paper we explore the factors and barriers that helped Instagram become a social commerce outlet for many users in Kuwait and around the world. © 2015 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.