A study of the CSFs of an e-cluster platform adoption for microenterprises

Abstract

Industrial electronic-cluster (e-cluster) combines electronic business (e-business) and industrial cluster, and this combination has been shown to enhance competitiveness. However, most previous studies of e-cluster have focused on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), but few have addressed e-clustering in microenterprises (MEs). MEs have some unique disadvantages compared to SMEs, and in order to enhance their competitiveness, an understanding the factors that affect their adoption of an e-cluster is an important issue for the e-cluster platform operator. This study adopted two multi-criteria decision-making methods, Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), to identify objectively the critical success factors (CSFs) for MEs to consider in the adoption of e-cluster. The research findings show that strengthening the four CSFs: product quality, product development and commercialization, product exposure, and market channel strength are the most important factors the successful adoption of e-cluster by MEs. Finally, these results offer some implications that provide a useful reference for MEs in adopting e-cluster as well as for e-cluster operators to use to convince MEs to join their e-cluster platforms.