The purpose of this study is to assess the state of e-commerce adoption by the SMEs in Northern Malaysia and to examine the factors that might hinder the adoption. The methodology employed in this study was questionnaire survey. Questionnaires were sent to the SMEs in Northern who were listed in the latest official business directory of SMI association of Malaysia as well as other sources. Analysis of the data obtained found that the general usage of e-commerce among the SMEs in Northern Malaysia is low; most firms seemed to have implemented only basic e-commerce applications and do not adopt advance e-commerce applications. For example, the most used e-commerce application is email whereas the least used application is online payment system. Furthermore, while a substantial number of the SMEs have implemented web sites, they were used merely to display products and company information rather than having advanced features such as providing online transaction and online payment services. Analysis of benefits realized found that most of the SMEs in Northern Malaysia, which have adopted e-commerce, only gained some of the benefits of e-commerce. Benefits realized were in the areas of customer service, market expansion, and back-end efficiency and inventory management. On the other hand, the SMEs who have adopted e-commerce seemed incapable of improving their overall performance and profitability. Examination of the factors that might hinder the adoption of e-commerce by the SMEs in Northern Malaysia were initially identified through factor analysis as environmental barriers, financial barriers, governmental barriers, technical barriers and behavioural barriers. However, correlation analysis showed that only factors related to organizational, governmental and environmental barriers have some negative influence on the extent of e-commerce usage. Out of the three factors, only the factor associated with environmental barriers has a significant correlation with the extent of e-commerce adoption. Regression analysis confirmed that the factor related to environmental barriers has significant negative influence on the extent of e-commerce adoption. Therefore, it was concluded that while many factors could be hindering the adoption of e-commerce by the SMEs in Northern Malaysia, only the factor pertaining to environmental barriers has significant negative influence on its adoption. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2004
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267599 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Liew, Voon Kiong |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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