Empowerment of SME websites—Development of a web-empowerment scale and preliminary evidence

Rudolf Sinkovics () and Elfriede Penz ()

Journal of International Entrepreneurship, 2005, vol. 3, issue 4, 303-315

Abstract: The emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web has been argued to fundamentally reshape economic conditions and business practices of firms. It is seen as a promoter of rapid internationalisation of companies, particularly small and medium enterprises. In the aftermath of the burst of the electronic-bubble business practitioners and academics look with scrutiny on successful web-strategies, relevant dimensions of online-success and try to identify viable website practices which enable long-term rewards. The literature offers a rather patchy pattern for successful web-strategies and consumer perspectives on what is expected from websites is hardly available. Within this paper, we introduce the dimension “web-empowerment”. This is a multidimensional construct comprising of consumer views on various dimensions of relevant and successful websites. The web-empowerment scale is based on a large sample from Austria, and developed according to scale development procedures. The relevance of this construct and practical issues in the context of a cross-country sample of SME’s is empirically examined. The paper concludes by offering implications for SME practitioners and for research. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005

Keywords: Internet; Website; Assessment; International marketing; SME (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10843-006-7858-8

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