An Assessment and Strategic Guidelines for Developing E-Commerce in the Asia-Pacific Region

The Asia-Pacific region is growing in e-commerce adoption despite a global economic slowdown. Developed countries rhat have been offering e-commerce have shown impressive performance iu their respective economies, but the Asia-Pacific region srill lags behind in the e-business race. This is due ro several factors which include language. educarion, technology, and technical infrcistrucrure. The aim of rhe following discussion is ro develop a framework that embraces key global driving forces and national policy forces impacting e-business readiness in rhe Asia-Pacific region through conceptualizarion of the key global forces as primary drivers of e-business readiness and narional policy drivers as enablers of e-business growrh. Using these determinants, a strategic map is then developed to identify where various counrries in the Asia-Pacific region are currenrlx posirioned in rerms of their respective e-business readiness. Ke\ factors that act as impediments to e-commerce growth as well as srraregies ro accelerare the growth of e-commerce in the Asia-Pacific region are presented.