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
