Greek vs. International E-commerce Systems: An Evaluation based on User-centered Characteristics

This paper presents a survey about Greek and International electronic commerce systems. The survey focuses in specific characteristics aiming to evaluate the quality of e-commerce systems as far as the end user is concerned. This paper provides the set of characteristics used for the evaluation, discusses the evaluation method and the derived results and the presents the basic similarities and differences between Greek and International e-commerce systems. The paper presents detailed results from the evaluation of both Greek and International e-commerce systems related to characteristics such as the existence and usability of basic e-commerce functions –such as shopping cart, shopping list, search engine, etc. It also focuses on web-based characteristics – such as background colors, site map, multilingualism, etc.– and mostly focuses on e-commerce specific issues –such as the product’s presentation, payment methods, product shipment, etc. Evaluation results showed that the Greek ecommerce systems are developed having as model similar International ecommerce systems with fairly good results. It should be mentioned that the improvement of the quality for e-commerce systems would not have to be relied on coping the international systems. On the contrary the growth of Greek ecommerce systems should emphasize in the collaboration with the end user, in the application of new ideas. That will give impulse in the development and growth of Internet technologies and electronic commerce in Greece.