A Model of Factor Influences on Electronic Commerce Adoption and Diffusion in Small-and Medium-sized Enterprises

To survive in today’s global marketplace, businesses need to be able to deliver products on time, maintain market credibility and introduce new products and services faster than competitors. This is especially crucial to the Smalland Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Since the emergence of the Internet, it has allowed SMEs to compete effectively and efficiently in both domestic and international market. Unfortunately, such leverage is often impeded by the resistance and mismanagement of SMEs to adopt Electronic Commerce (EC) proficiently. Consequently, this research aims to investigate how SMEs can adopt and implement EC successfully to achieve competitive advantage. Building on an examination of current technology diffusion literature, a model of EC diffusion has been developed. It investigates the factors that influence SMEs in the adoption of EC, followed by an examination in the diffusion process, which SMEs adopt to integrate EC into their business systems.