The adoption of internet-based business-to-business e-marketplaces among small and medium-sized enterprises in their international marketing practices

This study investigates the major reasons for e-marketplace adoption among SMEs in their international marketing practices. Based on organizational innovation theories, resource-based view theories of the firm, and former studies in the IS adoption research, a three match-based framework was proposed for IS innovation adoption among organizations. And based on this framework, we proposed a parsimonious model in which SMEs’ adoption decision of Internet-based B2B emarketplace were affected by their 1) perceived performance gap in their international marketing practices, 2) perceived potential utility in new market development from adoption, and 3) perceived resource readiness for adoption and implementation. Our empirical study shows that the perceived performance gap gives a firm incentive to try and adopt new marketing approaches, whereas the perceived potential utility and the perceived resource readiness showed how well the e-marketplace solution fits with the firm’s situation. Jointly, these three factors explained a SME’s adoption decision for e-marketplace initiatives.