For the last 20 years, while many electronic business (e‐business)/electronic commerce (e‐commerce) systems have been successfully adopted in businesses across different industries, a significant number have failed, especially in small to medium enterprises (SMEs). It is therefore necessary to explore critical success factors (CSFs) for SMEs in adopting e‐commerce success. A blend of quantitative and qualitative research methods were used, consisting of literature review, focus group studies, pilot tests, and surveys. Total survey was of 11.54% (277 out of 2401). Data analysis procedures were adopted, which comprised initial reliability analysis, validity analysis, t‐testing, factor analysis, and detailed reliability analysis. As a result, a total of 15 items were identified as common CSFs for SMEs successfully adopting e‐commerce system, which could be adopted as an effective tool for assisting SMEs in effectively adopting e‐commerce systems, and as a yardstick further to develop new methods for measuring e‐commerce success.
Part of the book: E-Business
In the literature, a lack of strong consensus or well-known theoretical research framework exists to defining and evaluating e-commerce success among small to medium enterprises (SMEs). Exploring more effective methods to describe and evaluate e-commerce success becomes a challenging task. This research seeks to help fill the gap by proposing a new model to evaluate e-commerce success from a business perspective. This measure has been termed e-commerce business satisfaction (EBS). A total of 2401 surveys were successfully sent to SMEs. The usable response rate for the surveys was 7.54%. Principal component analysis with varimax rotation method was then adopted within the factor analysis. Using the 15 critical success factors (CSFs) obtained from previous research as a foundation, an EBS management model was finally simply developed to assist SMEs business managers in effectively adopting e-commerce systems or evaluating e-commerce success, which was categorised into five components including Marketing, Management Support and Customer Acceptance, Website Effectiveness and Cost, Managing Change and Knowledge and Skills. Further research is needed to determine the weighting of each CSF so that a yardstick measurement method might be further developed to assist SMEs in adopting e-commerce successfully.
Part of the book: Management of Information Systems