Typology of B-to-B e-commerce initiatives and related benefits in manufacturing SMEs

Empirical research into business-to-business e-commerce issues involving manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is still embryonic. In an attempt to partially fill this gap, this paper presents empirical data from an electronic survey conducted among 96 manufacturing SMEs to investigate e-commerce initiatives and their perceived benefits for adopting firms. E-commerce initiatives are assessed in this study using a set of 36 business processes that can be executed using e-commerce tools. These processes were classified according to their focus: customer (downstream), supplier (upstream) or in-house. The research findings point to four main profiles for manufacturing SMEs with different e-commerce focuses. The first group seems to lack any focus or may still be exploring e-commerce opportunities. The second and third groups are supplier-and customer-focused, respectively. The fourth group consists of the more involved SMEs that have leveraged their e-commerce initiatives with both their customers and their suppliers. The results also suggest the existence of a close alignment between e-commerce focus and the related benefits.