The Adoption of E-commerce in Manufacturing SMEs: Determinants and Effect on Growth

This study attempts to unveil the determinants of E-commerce (EC) adoption and investigate how the EC adoption influences the firm's growth. A proposed model was tested using data via an empirical analysis carried out with a sample of 94 manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in China, applying a structural equation linear model to the partial least squares (PLS) methodology. The findings indicate that the perceived innovative attributes of EC and organizational context as well as entrepreneurship are all positively associated with the adoption of EC, while the perceived cost of EC and competitive intensity have negative impact on the EC adoption. The results confirm that the EC adoption is significantly related to the firm's growth.