Zawaya

Cultural barriers and mistrust

By: Saloua Charfi

A band has recently played to a packed house in Tunis; tickets were mostly purchased online, and quickly sold out. In Tunisia, online purchasing and payment are very recent. There is a variety of websites for clothing, makeup and pastries; not to mention online billing websites. However, we cannot consider that as a phenomenon. People are still reluctant, and do not fully trust online payment methods; moreover, many cultural and technical barriers still stand in their way.

Traditionally, women are the ones who do the shopping. In the Maghreb, housewives still constitute the majority, and for some, shopping is their only distraction. Furthermore, Maghreb women like to bargain just for fun and to communicate; they especially love to touch, smell, and try products… And these needs cannot be satisfied with online purchasing.

Also, buying online requires some computer knowledge. In developing countries, however, this seems to be restrained to a tiny minority of educated people who can also afford the luxury of buying a computer, and paying for an Internet subscription. Let us not forget that the illiteracy rate is high among women; and even those who have studied for a few years, do not necessarily master a language other than Arabic. Besides, it is technically impossible at the moment to write website addresses in Arabic.

Apart from these obstacles that are inherent to development issues, people are increasingly cautious regarding online payment due to the increase in cyber crime. People face the risk of having their credit card numbers stolen. Even worse, some say that they don’t trust the delivery service, as they had found packages of products they purchased online open, with missing items. The seller blamed the postal service, and the latter accused the seller.

Other people find these websites to be poorly designed and unattractive, due to their low-quality pictures and messy design. Websites are generally unclear, so consumers are afraid of making misclick mistakes, without having the possibility of addressing them by the websites that use automatic programs for the most part.

These worries and misgivings vanish when it comes to paying water, telephone and electricity bills. People prefer to take this risk, instead of losing a lot of time in endless queues.