Research On The Influencing Factors On The Continual Adoption Of BtoB E-commerce Among SMEs

The total trade volume of E-commerce reached around1,300billion USD in ourcountry in2012, with the ratio of BtoB e-commerce volume among SMEs of53.3%. AsE-commerce has become a more and more important tool for the SMEs when they areexploring the domestic and overseas markets, it has been attracting the attention andinterests from researchers all over the world and also become one of the frontier topicsamong the E-commerce areas. In the individual information technology acceptanceresearch field, the TAM model and its derivatives have become predominant and manyachievements are achieved under the endeavor of many scholars since Davis put forwardthe TAM model in1985at the first time. However the achievements are a little moreinfertile in the organizational level information technology acceptance area whencompared with the individual level, many progresses have been made in it. Regarding theorganizational level, the studies are mainly done under the frame of TOE(technology-organization-environments) combining Roger’s DOI(Diffusion ofInnovation) theory. More and more researchers begin to focus their studies on thecontinual adoption of e-commerce among SMEs with the development of e-commerceand more and more important position of SMEs, they agree it’s the continual adoptionthat determines whether the e-commerce will succeed or not at last, though the initialadoption is also critical for its diffusion. It becomes a valuable topic for both theory andpractice to study the key affecting factors of SMEs’ decision on continual adoption ofBtoB e-commerce since it’s the most common mode of SMEs e-commerce. Therefore,this paper aims at exploring and finding out the key factors affecting the decision oncontinual adoption of e-commerce among SMEs both from the theoretical and practicalangles. The main structure of this paper comes as following.The first chapter mainly introduces the background, research value, main contents,ideas, methods as well as the potential innovations. In the second chapter, the authormainly collects and analyzes the current related research papers concerning thee-commerce adoption, and also introduces the main theories which are used as the basisof the subsequent chapters in this paper. The tendency and limits of current researcheswould be obtained with analyzing the related research papers. The third chapter containsthe core theory of the whole paper. It mainly studies the e-commerce adoption process and affecting factors among SMEs. Three models have been put forward in this chapter,namely the E-commerce Development Stage Model among SMEs, the Factors AffectingE-commerce Adoption among SMEs, and the Concept Model of Continual Adoption ofBtoB E-commerce among SMEs, with the characteristics of management anddecision-making among SMEs and current research achievements taking into account. Inthe forth chapter, the author mainly analyzes the factors affecting BtoB E-commerceadoption among SMEs empirically. With the empirical analysis, seven factors have beenfound out to have significant influences on the adoption decision, which containprofessional knowledge, enterprise resources, risk propensity, perceived ease of use,perceived relative advantage, perceived competitive press and government support. In thefifth chapter, the author put forward the hypothesis model containing factors affecting theBtoB e-commerce continual adoption among SMEs, with the research conclusions inboth the third and the forth chapters. All the seven factors are categorized into threedimensions, namely decision entity, decision object and decision context, and15hypotheses have also been put forward here. Then, the structural equation model (SEM)is used to test the validity, reliability and fit of this model. All the results are excellentand all the hypotheses have passed the examination. With the analysis, the perceivedrelative advantage is found to have the most significant influence on the continualadoption of BtoB E-commerce among SMEs. In the sixth chapter, the reasons causing theSMEs not to adopt BtoB e-commerce any more are analyzed and relative suggestions topromote continual adoption are put forward under the government, SMEs, and BtoBservice providers angles respectively with the research conclusions of the fifth chapter. Inthe seventh chapter, the author lists the main conclusions, limits and future researchdirection of this paper.On the basis of current achievements in this field, this paper conducted asystematical research on the continual adoption of BtoB e-commerce among SMEs withthe individual and firm level information technology adoption theories combined, takinginto account the management and decision-making characteristics of SMEs. The potentialinnovations might include:(1) It provides a new research angle of e-commerce amongSMEs.(2)It provides the Model of Factors Affecting Continual Adoption of BtoBE-commerce among SMEs from the firm level.(3) It enriches,develops the theories in the BtoB e-commerce adoption among SMEs’ field and put forward three theoretical models,namely the E-commerce Development Stage Model among SMEs, the Factors AffectingE-commerce Adoption among SMEs, and the Concept Model of Continual AdoptionBtoB E-commerce among SMEs.(4) The real factors affecting the continual adoption ofBtoB e-commerce have been discovered with collecting, analyzing and summarizing therelated articles as well as continually following the local cases. The statistical analysisconfirmed the validity of the model and its related hypothesis, and the pointed tactics areput forward to promote the BtoB e-commerce among SMEs in our country according tothese results.