CHALLENGES OF ONLINE MARKETING IN KANDAHAR CITY

Increasing accessibility to internet in Afghanistan, creates a number of opportunities for the people including online marketing and e-commerce. By materializing this opportunity an increasing number of people engaged in online marketing and offer a variety of products online in some big cities such as Kandahar city as consumers increasingly use social media for a variety of purposes including consumption related tasks. Though, recently, a great deal of attention has been focused on the tremendous opportunities online marketing presents in the world but, in Afghanistan specifically in Kandahar city no clear development happened in practice, because of some fundamental challenges online marketers faced in this city. In this study, these challenges are present based on results of a survey among a sample of 15 marketing executives in Kandahar city. The results reveal that development of ICT infrastructure and resources, improving the quality of e-banking systems and services, providing cheap and high quality internet, providing income sources for the people, e-business education for consumers and taking Appropriate mechanisms into practice to develop and apply strong cyber laws for privacy and security controls, regulating online business and sustaining digital economy are the biggest improvement opportunities for online marketers/e-commerce across sectors in Kandahar city and similar contexts.