CSFs of e-commerce admission in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs)

Indeed, leaders in e-commerce have achieved a 41% improvement in cycle times and 10% reductions in staff costs, whereas they have increased returns on investment to about 13-fold. Regarding these advantages and opportunities, it seems that identifying success and failure factors involved in e-commerce implementation is necessary. So, the SMEs could take faster and easier actions in developing e-commerce concerning these factors. This paper attempts to review the critical success factors (CSFs) that affect e-commerce adoption in Iranian SMEs and determine the importance of each factor using statistical techniques. In this regard, six hypotheses were defined on the premises of the relationship between the independent variables of the modified TAM model and e-commerce adoption using correlation tests. To perform this research, a number of SMEs implementing e-commerce in Iran were selected as samples. The information was collected from officials of the information technology units of enterprises. The results show that variables of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, innovative character of the enterprise, information technology maturity and subjective norms have a significant positive impact on adoption of e-commerce in SMEs. However, the industry competitive environment characteristics were found to have an insignificant correlation on the dependent variable. By ranking the independent variables, the perceived usefulness was identified as an important factor affecting the adoption of e-commerce in SMEs, while the variables of perceived ease of use, subjective norms, information technology maturity and innovative character of the enterprise, follow as the next ranks. In conclusion, some suggestions were given to the involved officials and industrial managers to facilitate implementation and establishment of e-commerce in SMEs.