Personas of E-Commerce Adoption in Small Businesses in New Zealand

Abstract

Focus group methodology is introduced in this paper as one appropriate methodology to study the impact of technological innovation factors on eCommerce (EC) adoption in small businesses (SMEs) in New Zealand. The research results suggested two emerging issues pertaining to EC adoption in SMEs in this research. Firstly, SMEs would not invest their scant resources on perceived risky advanced EC initiatives. In adopting simple EC technologies such as Web page and email, factors like cost and compatibility were found not hindering the adoption decision. On the other hand, the proposed drivers to adopt these simple technologies were not highly significant as such. Secondly, the SMEs retained a particular view about advancing their simple EC initiatives. They envisaged that advancing their EC initiatives such as adopting “fully-blown” and interactive Web sites will give more weight to the impact of the different factors in this research on their adoption decisions of EC. The gulf between the current adoption and usage levels and the envisaged advanced EC initiatives seemed to be increasing further suggesting the weakness of the EC phenomenon in SMEs in this research. The research portrays a path were such gaps could be addressed and hence, this path should guide the SMEs in advancing their EC initiatives. Implications arising from this research with respect to theory and to practice are discussed in this research.