Determinants Of Business-to-business E-commerce Adoption Among Smes In Ghana

The internet is now a vibrant business platform across many countries.Since the late 1990 s,various industries have adopted the internet to promote their products and services to the entire global market.The internet has helped business organisation to operate beyond the boundaries of their physical location to reach both customers and suppliers from remote locations in any part o of the world.This has reduced the restrictions that traditional offline market platforms imposed on business operations due to distance.With the internet markets,more and more organizations irrespective of their size can compete effectively in the global market and consolidate their growth potential and competitiveness in the global business place.Despite the benefit of the internet as a consummate platform for contemporary marketing promotion,its adoption for business goes through a tortuous and usually difficult process that requires an overhaul of organisation's systems,structures,strategies,staff,skills,styles and shared values.Generally,it is believed that several technological,organisation and environmental factors affect the rate of E-commerce adoption.The size and unique business proposition of SMEs in Ghana makes them susceptible to E-commerce adoption lag.They face myriad of barriers emanating from both internal and external factors that need to be explored with more sophisticated analytical models than previous studies.The need to fill the dearth of literature about E-commerce adoption among SMEs in Ghana is the reason for this research.The purpose of this research was to investigate the main barriers that hinder effective E-commerce adoption by SME firms in Ghana.The study also sought to examine the extent to which online business value can influence the process of B2 B ecommerce adoption.The research evaluated the robustness of the TOE model in simulating the main barriers and prospects of B2 B ecommerce adoption.This helps to understand the role of technological factors,organisation factors and environmental factors in the process of B2 B E-commerce adoption in Ghana.This research was also interested in knowing assessing the moderating effect of size of organization,industry of operations and facilitating conditions on the relationship between online business value and B2 B E-commerce adoption among SMEs in Ghana.Two hundred SMEs were sampled randomly across selected sectors in Ghana for this study.The companies were selected based on the accessible population.The industries were selected from the pharmaceutical,real estate and fast moving consumer goods sectors.Respondents were also sampled from the hospitality industry,the woodwork and automobile industries.A five point Likert scale questionnaire was designed based on questions collected from the extant literature regarding technological factors,organizational factors and environmental factors.A collection of more robust structural equation and canonical correlation analytical strategy was applied to analyse the primary data for this research.The study noted that all the three key determinants of E-commerce adoption were proven valid in their respective hypotheses.Regarding technology,the study noted that cost of technology,complexity of technology and compatibility of technology were the main significant influence of online business value which in turn affect B2 B E-commerce adoption by SMEs in Ghana..The hypotheses that top management support,financial resources and existing human resource IT knowledge as organizational factors that influence online business value and subsequent adoption of B2 B E-commerce is also validated among the respondents.The evidence in this study also supports the final hypotheses that explored the interaction between environmental factors(competitive pressure,supplier pressure and regulatory factors),online business value and B2 B Ecommerce adoption by SMEs in Ghana.The presence of facilitating conditions,size of firm and industry of operation were all noted to have a moderating influence on the relationship between online business value and B2 B E-commerce adoption of SMEs in Ghana.The outcome of this research provides some clarity on the factors that influence B2 B E-commerce adoption among SMEs.In the context of institutional acceptance and use of technology for the B2 B E-commerce,the technological factors,organizational factors and external environmental factors remain very critical to understand the success stories of modern electronic business which are necessary for effective cross-national business development and management.It is recommended that developers of the B2 B E-commerce platforms must be mindful of the needs of the SMEs and their resource capabilities.There is the need to explore cheaper B2 B E-commerce platforms and develop them to suit SMEs that are unable to find the open source systems suitable for their specific operations.SMEs in general must develop the capacity to change and explore the emerging field of B2 B E-commerce.While external forces can provide the platform for SMEs to mature and grow their business,the ultimate decision and initiative depends on the SMEs themselves.This is where it is important for the top managers in SMEs to develop critical interest and value for B2 B E-commerce technology,which can then be passed on to their employees to begin a chain of innovation diffusion reform.Furthermore,Government support for SMEs to develop capacity for B2 B E-commerce integration is still a key element in African and the Ghanaian market.It is recommended that SMEs in Ghana constitute associations or unions through which they can press home their specific IT needs which can support their eventual adoption of B2 B E-commerce platforms...