Effective Collaborative Commerce Adoption

Abstract

Technology increasingly pervades the business world and society generally. According to Walters (2004, p. 219) “markets have globalized, technology has become all embracing, and relationships with suppliers, customers, and competitors are undergoing constant change.” These developments potentially raise considerable opportunities for small and medium enterprises (SMEs)1 to enter into the global marketplace and form “partnerships” including alliances, networks, and collaborative commerce (c-commerce) (Jarrett, 1998). Though exemplars of c-commerce exist in Australia, it has not been widely adopted by SME’s. Generally, Australian SMEs have been slow to adopt any form of electronic commerce. The primary reason given for lack of adoption amongst many small businesses is that they see no real benefit in having a Web presence, that is they perceive their businesses to be too small, or they had not factored in the on going maintenance of Web pages (ABS, 2003; van Beveren & Thomson, 2002). Fear of the unknown and lack of skills have also been suggested as reasons why the uptake of technology is less for small businesses (Barry & Milner, 2002; Darch & Lucas, 2002). If firms have been slow to embrace e-commerce, then it could explain the slow uptake of c-commerce. This article looks beyond e-commerce and suggests framework to explain c-commerce adoption.