Business-to-business adoption of eCommerce in China

There is an absence of research on business-to-business eCommerce in developing countries which covers wide-ranging issues beyond contextual imperatives. This paper analyzes eCommerce adoption by businesses in China from internal, external and contextual perspectives. The contributions of this paper are to extend and adapt the Perceived eReadiness Model [A. Molla, P.S. Licker, eCommerce adoption in developing countries: a model and instrument, Information & Management (42) 2005, pp. 877–899; A. Molla, P.S. Licker, Perceived E-Readiness factors in e-Commerce adoption: an empirical investigation in a developing country, International Journal of Electronic Commerce 10(1), 2005, pp. 83–110] to eCommerce in China in an empirical study of 134 Chinese SMEʹs. This study validates the Perceived eReadiness Model [53,54]. It further analyzes the contextual and organizational factors that affect business-to-business eCommerce adoption in China. Findings show that the important inhibiting factors in China are restricted access to computers, lack of internal trust, lack of enterprise-wide information sharing, intolerance towards failure, and incapability of dealing with rapid change. These variables are analysed in the context of Chinese culture.