Abstract
Internet importance and effect is increasing in every part of daily life, especially in business where internet canprovide some serious solutions for many issues, it can alter many traditional methods and procedures that wouldinclude distribution. Distribution channels are traditionally the organization, or set of organizations, responsiblefor delivering a product from the manufacturer to the end-users, Internet has affected traditional distributionchannels in developed countries and markets, as a matter of fact; internet itself can be viewed as a newdistribution channel. Accordingly, this study aims at identifying the effect of internet usage on the traditionaldistribution channels in Jordanian private commercial firms in terms of creating new direct online sales channeland reducing the numbers of intermediaries. The study also examines the moderating effect of firm’s size on theoriginal relation between internet usage and traditional distribution channels. In order to achieve theseobjectives, two main hypotheses were formed based on the literature review. A regulated research methodologywas applied to test the hypotheses over a proportional systematic random sample from large, medium, and smallprivate commercial firms in Jordan. A questionnaire was constructed and distributed to top and middlemanagement of private commercial firms in Jordan. 904 screened and filtered questionnaires were processesusing SPSS. The results of the statistical analysis were demonstrated. The study had shown that internet partlyeffect traditional distribution channels, the effect is limited to creating new direct online channel, and even thiseffect is weak, and got even weaker as the firms size got smaller.
Highlights
The rapid and continuing growth of internet and the World Wide Web has been noticed and examined by many researchers (Cockburn & Wilson, 1996; Aldridge et al, 1997; Griffiths, 1999; Coffman & Odlyzko, 2001) and many theorists and professionals predicted that Internet will change the way we do business (Nath et al, 1998; Wen et al, 2001; Yoffie, 2010)
The second hypothesis was accepted indicating that firms’ size affects the relationship between internet usage and traditional distribution channels. These results mean that internet usage did not reduce the number of intermediaries firms have to deal with
The current internet usage did not substitute the tasks normally carried out by intermediaries on any level and the Jordanian private commercial firms still need all the intermediaries it deal with, this is consistent with previous studies found in the literature review (Peterson et al, 1997; Mehra, 1999; Law et al, 2004; Goldkuhl, 2005) things were expected to developed as we enter year 2014 and internet become more and more an essential part of the daily life
Summary
The rapid and continuing growth of internet and the World Wide Web (www) has been noticed and examined by many researchers (Cockburn & Wilson, 1996; Aldridge et al, 1997; Griffiths, 1999; Coffman & Odlyzko, 2001) and many theorists and professionals predicted that Internet will change the way we do business (Nath et al, 1998; Wen et al, 2001; Yoffie, 2010). Internet proved to be very helpful to firms, internet usage offers great chance for firms to compete worldwide efficiently (Scupola, 2002). Examining the effect of internet usage on different businesses and marketing activities and practices in developing countries will provide better understanding of the actual situation of internet usage worldwide
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