Abstract
India has one of the largest bases of small- and medium-sized enterprises around the world after China, and it provides several benefits to the Indian economy in terms of generating a vast range of employment opportunities, innovation of new self-reliance technologies, aiding export growth, socio-economic growth, and rural development, which supports the nation-building. Consumers are using the power of digital technologies and e-commerce; this is the time to measure the propensity of business-to-business (e-commerce) adoption among unorganized retailers. Some studies measured the e-commerce impacts on customers, impacts on organized retailers, and impacts on unorganized retailers. In addition, some other studies concentrated on assessing the unorganized retail SME performance, competition, issues, and challenges. However, studies related to measuring e-commerce acceptance by unorganized retailers are relatively low. This chapter aims to measure the nuances of business-to-business (e-commerce) propensity among unorganized retailers.
TopIntroduction
India has one of the largest bases of Small and Medium-sized enterprises around the world after China, and it provides several benefits to the Indian economy in terms of generating a vast range of employment opportunities, innovation of new self-reliance technologies, aid export growth, socio-economic growth, and rural development which supports the nation building. In addition, as the new MSME Annual report shows, the service sector holds a 33 per cent MSME share in India and generates 362.82 lakhs new jobs service sector (Government of India, 2021). Most of the service sector enterprise do retail business in India, and the AT Kearney's Global Retail Development Index shows that India holds the second rank in 2021 with a score of 64.4 (Smriti Tankha, 2021). Further, Indian retail is dominated by Unorganized retail with a share of 88 per cent, organized retail holds a share of 9 per cent, and E-Commerce holds a share of 3 per cent (IBEF - Indian Retail Industry Report, 2021). The retail sector growth in India is backed up by several factors like rapid urbanization, robust industrial policy, socio-economic and cultural development, Modern family structure, increase in income, rapid changes in consumer habits, supporting digital infrastructure, internet connectivity, and digital disruption in the retail organization.