Evaluation of Most Effective Third-Party E-Commerce Platform in Senegal

Abstract

With the fast development of the new information and communication technologies and their current involvement in the business world, no country as less developed as it can be, can’t ignore them. Developed and emerging countries have understood it and have very early exploited the opportunities offered by these information and communication technologies. One of their most compelling opportunities is the emergence of electronic commerce. However, the e-commerce is not limited to the purchase and sale of goods and services through the Internet, but it requires a strategic regulation for its proper functioning; because its development passes through its proper functioning. In the majority of the less developed countries, e-commerce is still at its embryonic stage where the large part of online transactions happens in social networks like Facebook and Whatsapp. Senegal is one of those countries, therefore the objective of this research to find a solution on how to organize the Senegalese e-commerce market by proposing the most effective third-party e-commerce platform that can be suitable to its market. There are different types of e-commerce but the most known, used and that have proved their effectiveness are the B2B e-commerce, B2C e-commerce, and C2C e-commerce. According to the Statistics Portal, Statista, the B2B e-commerce worldwide gross merchandise volume was 7,300 billion USD in 2016 and the B2C e-commerce worldwide sales reached 1,859 billion USD the same year. As for the C2C e-commerce, eMarketer estimated its worldwide sales at 1,915 billion USD in 2016. Therefore, they are the third-party e-commerce platforms used as the alternatives and from which the best for the Senegalese e-commerce market is evaluated in the research through the use of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The results have shown the B2B third-party e-commerce platform to be the most effective for the Senegalese market; without overlap of alternatives within uncertainties as of the result of the sensitivity analysis.