Factors affecting the adoption of B2B e-commerce technologies

Abstract

The objective of this study is to analyze the factors affecting the adoption of Internet-enabled business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B EC) and test their applicability in different contexts. We used 275 responses from an online survey of North American firms and tested our hypotheses with Multiple Regression and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). We found that scalability is the biggest contributor to B2B EC usage. We also compared each adoption factor across adopters and nonadopters of B2B EC. Six of the nine adoption factors tested distinguished adopters of B2B EC from nonadopters. Then we analyzed the effects of these factors on adoption using several contextual variables, including firm size, firm type, management level of respondents, and country of origin of firms. The results showed that all of the contextual variables, except country of origin, influenced some of the adoption factors. Managers can use the findings of this study to understand which factors will most likely facilitate the implementation of B2B EC and be prepared to manage the effects of these factors on their initiatives more effectively. Many of the studies in this area have not tested the effects of contextual variables on B2B EC adoption. Thus, we contribute to the limited literature on this issue. The study shows that the technology---organization---environment (TOE) framework provides a strong foundation for the study of B2B EC. It also provides evidence that this framework is strengthened further when contextual variables are integrated into the theoretical model.