Adoption of e-commerce by Canadian SMEs: defining organizational, environmental and innovation characteristics

Abstract

[Introduction] While online sales have experienced high growth rates, e-commerce adoption rates by Canadian SMEs have not kept pace. Canadian SMEs continue to lag behind the US and the EU in adopting e-commerce. Recently, a survey of SMEs’ adoption of e-commerce was conducted to determine reasons for this low adoption rate. Constructs used in the survey focussed on three contexts: organizational, external environmental and innovation. The study found significant factors that differentiated adopters and non-adopters of e-commerce included technological opportunism and readiness, owner experience with computers, support within the organization, relative advantage and compatibility. This chapter focuses on the definitions of the variables in the organizational context.