A Study on the Influencing Factors of E-Commerce Adoption Among Small Medium Enterprises in Democratic Republic of the Congo (Published)
The purpose of this study is to explore the challenges or barriers to e-commerce adoption among SMEs in Democratic Republic of the Congo beyond the specific content covered in such interventions, and how infrastructural development might moderate those effects. The study also not only discusses that e-commerce adoption is imperative for the overall performance of SMEs, but also talks about how to mitigate the challenges. Qualitative as well as quantitative research methodology has been adopted in this study. A semi structured interview was conducted for getting an insight about e-commerce adoption. The researchers have found from the survey that there are different factors that affect the adoption of e-commerce which can be classified into three broad categories; technological, organizational and environmental factors. Although technological barriers are important challenges for e-commerce adoption in developing countries like DRC, but the importance of other barriers cannot be discriminated. Results of testing the model discovered two important findings: first, technological barriers, organizational barriers and environmental barriers have a direct negative relationship with e-commerce adoption. The results further show that technological barrier is the most determinant factor of e-commerce adoption followed by environmental and organizational factors respectively. Second, the moderating effects of infrastructural development was tested, which showed that the barriers have a more negative effect on e-commerce adoption for SMEs utilizing rural infrastructure than for urban SMEs.
Keywords: Small and Medium Enterprises, e-commerce adoption, environmental barriers, organizational barriers, technological barriers
Analysis of the Stage of E-Commerce Adoption by the Hotel Industry in North Cyprus and Factors that Might Prevent its Adoption (Published)
The present study intends to examine the stage of e-commerce utilization by the hotel industry in North Cyprus and then to assess the issues that could indeed prevent its adoption. Questionnaire survey was the main methodology employed in this study, the questionnaires have been sent to the hotels that were registered and recognized by the directory of Ministry of Tourism and other sources as well. Based on the findings obtained from the instrument following statement has been concluded, the utilization of e-commerce among the hotel industry in North Cyprus is low, and the majority of the hotels have integrated only the basics of e-commerce applications and do not implement the more advanced tools by using e-commerce. As an example for that, the most commonly used e-commerce application was website and email address, where online payment process was the least used application. When studying in depth the issues, which might cause a barrier to the implementation of the e-commerce among the hotel industry in north Cyprus, were identified by using the factor analysis. These factors included financial, behavioral, technical, governmental, organizational and environmental barriers, on the other hand, correlation analysis illustrated that all the factors have relatively negative influence on the degree of e-commerce application. From six factors, the only factor has associated indeed with organizational barriers has significant correlation with the extent of e-commerce adoption. Furthermore, regression analysis confirmed that the variables related to organizational barriers have a large negative influence on the amount of e-commerce adopted. In summary, the North Cyprus hotel industry although facing many issues preventing the full use of e-commerce the main factor related to organizational barriers.
Keywords: Electronic Commerce, Hospitality industry, e booking, e-commerce adoption, hotel industry