E-commerce research in developing countries: a systematic review of research themes, frameworks, methods and future lines of research

This paper presents a systematic review of e-commerce adoption research on developing countries with a focus on the classification of literature and their associated themes, frameworks, research methodology for ten years. A total of 151 articles from 35 peer-reviewed journals from 2010-2019 were retrieved and used in the analysis. The findings reveal that the issues of attitude towards e-commerce adoption and governance issues (legal and regulatory policies) have been comparatively neglected, whereas issues of trust and satisfaction have gained much attention. Though there has not been a constant increase in e-commerce research in developing countries over the past ten years, a significant number of published studies used the qualitative approach as a method of inquiry as compared to quantitative and mixed methodologies. Also, the majority of e-commerce studies on developing countries have not been supported by theoretical frameworks and models. As a contribution, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of e-commerce adoption in developing countries showing the trends of research themes, methodologies, and frameworks. Implications for future research were discussed.