The Situations of Sole Proprietorship, E-Commerce Entrepreneurs and Trends in Their E-commerce: A Case Study in Thailand

Pattarawadee Permwanichagun,Sumeth Kaenmanee,Thongphon Promsaka Na Sakolnakorn,Aree Naipinit

doi:10.5539/ass.v10n21p80

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the situations of sole proprietorship, e-commerce entrepreneurs and trends intheir e-commerce. This study uses a mixed-method quantitative and qualitative approach for collecting the data.The study finds that most sole proprietorships in e-commerce are owned females between 31 and 40 years oldwho are educated with a Bachelor’s degree (63.16%) and draw an income of 40,001–50,000 bahts per month(approximate $1 USD = 33 bahts). Most of these sole proprietorships (66.59%) are located in the central part ofThailand. These entrepreneurs spend more than eight hours a day on their businesses and supply their productsby themselves. However, most of the problems faced by these sole proprietorship, e-commerce entrepreneursinvolve the cost for investment in the business and the knowledge that is required in order to be an entrepreneur.Nevertheless, the trend toward sole proprietorship, e-commerce entrepreneurs in Thailand will increase with theadaptation of mobile-commerce in Thai society.

Highlights

Information technology (IT) is important in business, the Internet, which directly connects producers and customers (Harpaz, 2002) who can communicate quickly and clearly in real time (Fillis & Wanger, 2005)
The analysis focused on the situation of sole proprietorship, e-commerce entrepreneurs, and its descriptive statistical analysis was combined with data from expert interviews for reflections on the opportunities and gaps in the business that could be used for forecasting the trends of the e-commerce conducted by the sole proprietorship, e-commerce entrepreneurs
Most sole proprietorships in e-commerce are owned by females (67.39% versus 32.61% of males), so the results indicate that women like to select products and order products via the Internet (Rodgers & Harris, 2003)

Summary

Introduction

Information technology (IT) is important in business, the Internet, which directly connects producers and customers (Harpaz, 2002) who can communicate quickly and clearly in real time (Fillis & Wanger, 2005). In Asia, Internet users totaled about 1,076 million, or 44.74% of the world’s population. These users are increasing in line with opportunities to develop business networks. Entrepreneurs who are selling goods in their shops can use IT to sell even more online (Damanpour, 2001; Santos, 2003) as their marketing increases from local to worldwide, in Thailand The number of Internet domain names worldwide in 2012 was about 63,705, Thailand has about 20 million Internet users, which constitutes approximately 30% of the total population. More than 57% of these users shop online (National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, 2012) This way of doing business is known as electronic commerce (e-commerce). The capital investment factor is one reason for entrepreneurs’ decision to use IT in their business lines

Methods

Results

Conclusion