Research On Creating A Synergy Between E-Commerce And Express Delivery Services In Ghana

E-commerce and express delivery are two essential parts of social economy in many countries.They complement each other and develop together to promote the development of the national economy and meet the needs of people's production and life.In Ghana however,there is evidence of insufficient synergy between the two sectors of the economy,ultimately affecting economic growth.This study seeks to find a synergetic roadmap for the emerging e-commerce market and the express services as well as analyze the challenges presently existing in the Ghanaian e-commerce market.It also addresses the low patronage of digitized products and services,albeit how to leverage the existing latent tax net in the online market.To solve these challenges,empirical data is purposively sampled in Ghana using online surveys.This comprises a designed online questionnaire and a field interview.The reliability test of the questionnaire using Cronbach's Alpha test,presents the results: α=0.95,which suggests that the instruments used are reliable and consistent.A web-link is then generated via SurveyMonkey to administer the questionnaire from July to September 2019.In all,218 valid responses have been sampled and analyzed using percentage distributions,which are presented in graphs and tables with IBM's SPSS16 and Microsoft excel.Two hypotheses tests have been done with a one-tailed t-test and p-values derived.A structured-interview is also administered at the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlements System Limited and analyzed using statistical inference.The major findings of the study are: a perceived low consumer-trust in online transactions;insufficient express service supply for e-commerce;a low acceptance of digitized services;inadequate consumer-incentives for e-government services;a slow rate of express deliveries and a youth-based e-commerce demand force(18-40 years).To harness these outcomes,the author recommends: public-private partnerships(PPPs)for the postal services as well as tax and logistics incentives for companies that synergize;the introduction of third-party guarantee for online transactions;new transaction authentication technologies;enactment of e-transaction-friendly policies and incentives;creating a motivational ecosystem for electronic commerce to leverage on the promising youth-based demand force;and identifying unregistered and illegal e-business operators in order to widen the tax net.Future research can analyze trust in e-commerce using exploratory case studies.