Electronic Commerce Adoption Barriers in Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Developed and Developing Countries: A Cross-Country Comparison

Abstract

Today, electronic commerce (e-commerce) has been utilised as a rapid vehicle to transform the world into an information society. In the business environment, e-commerce has made considerable inroads not only into large organisations but also the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, SMEs are not adopting e-commerce with same speed as their larger counterparts. This slow growth has been attributed to various adoption barriers, which have been well documented in numerous research studies. While several recent studies have begun examining the relationship between the perceptions of adoption barriers in developed economies, the relationship between the perceptions of these barriers has not been fully examined in developing economies. This paper examines the correlation and underlying factors of barriers to e-commerce (as perceived by SME owner/managers) in a developing economy (Indonesia). It then compares these with SME owner/manager perceptions from a developed economy (Sweden). The study showed that there are differences in the groupings and priorities of barriers to e-commerce between the two locations. Most importantly, however, was the finding that while Swedish respondents were more concerned with technical issues, the Indonesian respondents were more concerned with organisational barriers.