E-commerce adoption by SMEs in developing countries: evidence from Indonesia

Rita Rahayu () and John Day
Additional contact information
Rita Rahayu: University of Huddersfield
John Day: University of Huddersfield

Eurasian Business Review, 2017, vol. 7, issue 1, No 2, 25-41

Abstract: Abstract This study aims to provide an overview of e-commerce adoption by SMEs in developing countries and, in particular, the extent of the adoption of e-commerce by Indonesian SMEs. It identifies the e-commerce benefits realized by these SMEs and investigates the relationship between the levels of e-commerce adoption and the benefits thus realized. The study was motivated by the limited studies related to e-commerce adoption by SMEs, especially in developing countries. In addition, it seems that most e-commerce studies are focused more on upstream issues: to see the factors that facilitate, or barriers faced regarding e-commerce adoption, rather than downstream issues: to see post-adoption benefits. This certainly limits our understanding about e-commerce adoption by SMEs in developing countries, as well as the post-adoption benefits of e-commerce. Indonesia was chosen as the place in which to conduct the study. A survey of 292 SMEs shows that the majority of them are still at an early stage in their adoption of e-commerce. Their use of e-commerce is dominated by marketing and purchasing and procurement activities. “Extending market reach”, “increased sales”, “improved external communication”, “improved company image”, “improved speed of processing”, and “increased employee productivity” are reported as the top six e-commerce benefits perceived by these SMEs. This study also shows that SMEs at the higher level of e-commerce adoption experience greater e-commerce benefits than those at other levels of adoption.

Keywords: E-commerce; SMEs; Benefits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40821-016-0044-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eurasi:v:7:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s40821-016-0044-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40821

DOI: 10.1007/s40821-016-0044-6

Access Statistics for this article

Eurasian Business Review is currently edited by Marco Vivarelli

More articles in Eurasian Business Review from Springer, Eurasia Business and Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().