shopping through Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat is catching on among Saudi women who like the idea of buying make-up, perfumes, accessories, clothes and food online. In fact, the social media platforms offer a good chance for anyone who wants to market goods and products free-of-charge, Al-Riyadh daily reports. But still some women do not trust the quality of the products sold on the social media websites and prefer not to take the risk. Fatima Al-Dawsari, a Saudi citizen, never buys anything from the social media website because several of her friends had a negative experience buying certain type of clothes and getting low-quality ones instead. "Most of the time, the products you get are different from the ones shown in the photos on social media websites. It's strictly cheating. I personally prefer to put up with the hassle of walking to the nearby mall and buying clothes myself after trying them out to make sure they are good enough and worth the money I have paid," she said. Victims Najla Muhammad, a private-sector employee, described her e-shopping experience as negative. She ordered a product and got another one and ended up paying a lot of money for it. Nada Al-Qahtani, a teacher, said e-shopping does not give too much chance in terms of checking the quality of the product first-hand. She was also cheated into paying money for a high-quality product and getting a low-quality one. In her opinion, browsing around in malls and trying out the products before buying them is safer than e-shopping. Regulations Khalid Al-Doas, a sociology expert, says that the spread of e-shopping is the natural result of the revolution of technology that has affected the world, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia included. Social media websites are influencing people's purchasing behavior, economic trends and social values. In some cases the influence is positive and in others it is negative. "I am sure some people would rate their e-shopping experience as positive and even recommend e-shopping to others. E-shopping is catching on fast in the Kingdom because most products offered online come at reasonable prices. I know some accounts on social media websites that have succeeded in this business and today have hundreds of customers inside and outside the country," he pointed out. Selling products online is a profitable business and does not need physical rental places. To explain more, instead of paying SR90,000 as a shop rent, the owner of the business pays SR1,500 every year being the rental fee of the website. Instead of paying SR40,000 in decoration and furniture, he pays SR4,000 being the costs of a website design. Some owners of social media website accounts cheat people and sell them fake products and some set up fake websites just to con people out of money. Therefore, this sector needs to be regulated to protect the general public against all acts of commercial fraud. He urged members of the public to buy products online off the well-known companies and stay away from suspicious accounts. He called upon concerned authorities to pass strict regulations for running online business on the social media websites with deterring penalties for all acts of commercial fraud. Such regulations will protect the rights of consumers and ensure they get the quality of products they pay money for.
