Study on Adoption of E-commerce in SMEs
Abstract: Growing e-commerce has an increasingly huge impact on the economy and society, offering new opportunities as well as threats for business organizations. The successful adoption of e-commerce by SMEs would affect the entire national economy, but SMEs have still shown a reluctance to adopt e-commerce, almost due to inadequate knowledge base and resources. This research sought to identify the range of issues surrounding SMEs in their potential adoption of e-commerce with the aim of recommending strategies that would enhance the level of successful adoption.
Keywords: e-commerce, SMEs, adoption
- Introduction
Electronic commerce refers to conducting business transactions over the Internet, which includes exchange of information of value in the form of products and services as well as payments, using web-based technologies (Fraser, Fraser amp; MacDonald,2000).Rapid changes brought about by e-commerce have offered new opportunities as well as threats for business organizations (Fraser et al.,2000). Companies are under increasing pressure to adopt e-commerce if they want to remain competitive (Henderson 2002).
Almost 90% of large corporations in china use the internet as an integral part of their business, but SMEs have been slower to do so (Zhao 2009). SMEs seem to be aware of the possible benefits to be achieved from adopting e-commerce, but they also recognize that there are significant barriers or inhibitors that influence their adoption.
This research sought to identify the factors influencing e-commerce adoption by SMEs and recommend strategies that would enhance the level of successful adoption. The rest of the paper is divided in three parts. In the first part, the definitions of SMEs and e-commerce were analyzed in detail. The second part focused on factors influencing e-commerce adoption by SMEs. The third part studied put forward some recommendation for promoting SMEs to adopt e-commerce.
- E-commerce and SMEs: An Overview
2.1 Definitions of e-commerce
Electronic commerce refers to conducting business transactions over the Internet, which includes exchange of information of value in the form of products and services as well as payments, using web-based technologies. It has been observed that e-commerce is not a simple innovation; rather it is a cluster of separate innovations, which involves accounting and auditing, business law and ethics, computer science and management information systems, economics and finance, marketing, management, and others.
2.2 Significance of e-commerce
E-commerce not only permits but facilitates an increase in productivity enabling the creation of new relationships with customers, distributors, suppliers and other strategic partners. While China has been relatively successful in getting many business online, there is still a gap between small and large enterprise – 45% for small and 90% for large by 2009 (Zhao 2009).
2.3 Definitions of SMEs
Small and medium enterprises (also SMEs) are companies whose headcount or turnover falls below certain limits. There are two criteria: the number of employees or annual sales turnover. Take China as an example, SMEs in industry have population of 300-2,000 and annual revenue of 4,000-40,000 million Yuan.
2.4 Characteristics of SMEs
The owners and managers of SMEs are one person, determining that strategic decisions are dependent only on a few people, which leads to a high identification with the business, a stable culture, and high commitment. Due to their relatively small size, simple product range and less market share, they are faced with problems such as the lack of human and financial resources leading to that SMEs tend to lack technical knowledge and specialists for e-commerce adoption.
2.5 Significance of SMEs
SMEs are the driving force behind a large number of innovations and contribute to the growth of the national economy through employment creation, investments and exports. Research suggests that SMEs are the major providers of new jobs and contribute positively to economic growth. SMEs make a significant contribution to Chinarsquo;s economy. SMEs represent over 99% of enterprises, employing 80% of Chinarsquo;s total workforce in urban and providing more than 50% of tax revenue. It is estimated that in 2009 there were 9,580,000 businesses with fewer than 300 employees.
The successful adoption of e-commerce by SMEs would affect the entire Chinarsquo; economy. There is growing evidence that SMEs is falling behind in the race for sustainable and valuable use of online business, a large percentage of them do not use the internet daily in their business operations.
2.6 The Patterns of SMEs use e-commerce
The using of e-commerce by SMEs may take many forms, from online purchasing of products, contacting suppliers through email, to marketing and selling their products through their own websites to international clients, which can be divided into upstream (business to business or B2B) and downstream (business to customer or B2C) activities. Upstream activities such as inbound logistics and operations can be organized globally to achieve economies of scale. Downstream activities such as marketing, sales and customer service must be organized on a multi-domestic basis.
Most SMEs use the internet for a very limited range of purposes, e.g. e-mail, an easier and more economic way to contact suppliers or receive services, as another medium for collecting information. Accordingly, the revenue they genera
剩余内容已隐藏，支付完成后下载完整资料
英语译文共 5 页，剩余内容已隐藏，支付完成后下载完整资料
资料编号：[486146]，资料为PDF文档或Word文档，PDF文档可免费转换为Word
