Abstract
This paper postulates that the effect of e-commerce on firm performance is not direct and needs to be examined using mediating factors. The Ordinary Least-Squares (OLS) model was employed with the data of the Flash Eurobarometer 439 Survey entitled The Use of Online Marketplaces and Search Engines by small and medium enterprises. The obtained findings provide support for the mediating hypothesis. To be more precise, while the relationship between e-commerce and firm performance is negative, it is positively mediated by certain types of internet sales channels. In particular, the benefits of e-commerce in terms of higher sales are more pronounced when firms use commercial websites and online marketplaces. On the other hand, the interaction between e-commerce and search engines has an insignificant effect on firm performance. This study advances research on e-commerce by emphasizing the importance of mediating effect.
Highlights
Nowadays, we live in an era of technical revolution or digital transformation that causes the progress of the mind of those who are part of it
By employing the mediating approach when analyzing the e-commerce firm performance relationship, our study offers extensions to theory related to e-commerce since it presents a much-grained analysis, acknowledging that the effect of e-commerce on firm performance may occur through different means—mediators
Despite the significant attention that the relationship between e-commerce and firm performance has received in the previous literature, obtained findings are mixed and equivocal [18,27,28,29,32,34,43,51]
Summary
We live in an era of technical revolution or digital transformation that causes the progress of the mind of those who are part of it. Considering that customers are increasingly “digitalizing,” firms subsequently transform and expand their technical capabilities so as to be innovative and to prepare their business for the digital age, all in order to win over as many customers as possible. By means of various internet sales channels (websites, online marketplaces, search engines, etc.), e-commerce permits market actors to compare, choose and safely purchase products and services. Firms typically start their web presentation by providing information about their business and their consumer-oriented products/services in support of other sales channels. The importance of e-commerce in today’s business is supported by the fact provided by Eurostat stating, that in 2018, e-commerce represented 18% of the total sales in the European Union (EU) countries [1]. It is underlined that the global nature of COVID-19 and its impact on e-commerce will further encourage international cooperation and development of policies related to e-commerce
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