SMEs' e-commerce adoption: perspectives from Denmark and Australia

Purpose – Proposes providing an insight about factors affecting business-to-business ecommerce adoption and implementation in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), highlighting similarities and differences between Danish and Australian SMEs. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on a wide literature review, focused on proposing a theoretical model of technological, environmental and organizational factors influencing e-commerce adoption and implementation. Subsequently, a questionnaire based on the research model has been developed and face-to-face interviews were conducted in Danish and Australian companies. Findings – The findings both corroborate previous results about significant factors affecting SMEs’ b-to-b e-commerce adoption and implementation and provide new, interesting insights. The study also finds many similarities and differences between Denmark and Australia. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation relates to the difficulty of generalization of the findings to a larger population of SMEs. To overcome this, a statistical survey is planned to be conducted in the future. Practical implications – The results of the empirical research provide indication to SMEs interested to adopt b-to-b e-commerce, large companies interested to conduct e-commerce transactions with small and medium size companies and policy makers. Originality/value – This paper both contributes to enhancing the understanding of the factors affecting business-to-business e-commerce adoption and implementation in SMEs and provides some interesting perspectives from Denmark ad Australia.