Saudi Arabia Internet users and e-commerce survey 2007

Between November and December 2007, the Arab Advisors Group team conducted a major comprehensive online survey of Internet users in the Saudi Arabia. The survey covered the Internet usage, e commerce and cellular usage and habits of the Internet users in Saudi Arabia. Respondents received an email shot in their inbox asking them to fill the survey either in Arabic or in English. The survey was conducted on the general Internet population, including both genders and all age groups across Saudi Arabia. The request to fill the survey was sent randomly through cooperation with popular portals in Saudi Arabia and the email shots were sent to more than 250,000 Internet users in Saudi Arabia registered with the cooperating portals. The survey received 2,761 responses in total. The responses were subjected to extensive quality checks in the form of cross checking answers to built-in quality control questions. Any discrepancy in the quality control questions resulted in removing the respondents’ answer from the sample: 752 responses (28.2%) were removed from the survey sample reducing the final sample size to 1,919 responses. Furthermore, a random double checking of 9% of the remaining sample was undertaken whereby Arab Advisors team sent the respondents confirmation emails requesting them to confirm their participation and prompting them to answer three questions to validate their responses. The online survey yields a confidence level of 99% with a margin of error of less than 2%. The Arab Advisors Group divided the survey questionnaire into two main sections: Telecommunications and Internet. The sections provide a balanced focus on the following areas Cellular subscriptions, 3G Cellular services, Internet usage trends, Internet subscription, Internet usage, Internet access methods and costs, Internet user's use of social networking, e-commerce, e-Banking and e-Government services.