A Comparative Research Between Basic B2B And Strategic B2B On Antecedents Of Adoption Intention

This research focuses on the topic of B2B e-business adoption decision antecedents. After a comprehensive literature review, we find almost none of those existing literature on e-business adoption research seriously concerned with the problem of the influence of different e-business type on adoption behavior. Based on theories of Dewar's broad analysis of radical and incremental innovation, Rogers' innovation diffusion theory, Swanson's Tri-core model, and as well as Lee's viewpoint on two ways of e-business value creation pattern, we developed an initial dichotomy model to classify the whole e-business scenario into basic B2B and strategic B2B. Because of its powerful abstraction of the main characters of the two types of e-business innovation, easy for research operationalization, and consistent with practitioner's perspective, this dichotomy is very useful for theoretical analysis about the different patterns of e-business adoption.Two main streams of IOS/EDI adoption research, rationalism and institutionalism, provide concrete theoretical foundation for e-business adoption research. Rationalism mainly use economic and technological oriented thinking, which regards innovation related attributes are the most important factors for predicting adoption behavior. Factors most frequently used in innovation diffusion theory are relative advantage, complexity, compatibility. Institutionalism mainly uses social structure isomorphism mechanism to explain innovation diffusion. Factors most widely used in institutional perspective are normative pressure, coercive pressure. Due to the intrinsic contradiction between rationalism and institutionalism, which have great difference in their phenomenological assumptions, they can't easily integrate into one model. By introducing the perspective of Giddens' Structuration Theory, Rationalism and institutionalism's dualism problem is dissolved by the duality concept, and a holistic model emerged. Six category factors are produced by this model, including benefit, compatibility, normative force, human agency, available resource and top management support. Then these factors are examined by a survey research.Most important findings includes: expected direct benefits and human agency are significant factors for both types of B2B innovation adoption intention; technological compatibility and IT competence are all insignificant factors for both types of B2B adoption intention; organizational compatibility and normative force showsignificance only for basic B2B adoption intention; expected indirect benefits, financial resource, and top management support show significance only for the adoption intention of strategic B2B. In benefits dimension, direct benefits are important for both types of adoption intention, while indirect benefits are more important for the adoption intention of strategic B2B. For those combined as social normative force, customer-side adoption proportion, supplier-side adoption proportion and competitor sector's adoption proportion are all important influential factors for basic B2B adoption intention. For those combined as human agency force, government support is the most important factor for adoption intention of both basic B2B and strategic B2B. As for strategic B2B, industry association coordination, key supplier's suggestion, along with government support, show significant influence on adoption intention.The most important contribution of this research is to divide the whole B2B scenario into basic B2B and strategic B2B for adoption research. Then, through an empirical testing, we confirm the existence of the difference between basic B2B and strategic B2B with regard to the antecedents of the adoption intention, and provide rich explanation for those differences. This research also contributes to the stream of structurational research in IS field, innovatively use the Structuration Theory in B2B adoption.