Facilitators and Inhibitors of E-Commerce Adoption in an Irish SME: An Action Research Case Study

摘要: Although the adoption of e-commerce is widely studied in the academic world, only a small percentage of these studies focus on the retail sector. An even smaller number of these studies focus on the Small to Medium size Enterprise (SME) sector, which accounts for a significant part of the Irish economy (99.4% in 1999). This study examines an Irish SME’s adoption of e-commerce, specifically identifying and understanding the factors that affected the adoption process. The research was achieved by conducting an action research case study. The researcher worked in the retail SME throughout the research process, and had been employed there for the previous 5 years. The research concluded that the adoption of e-commerce within the SME sector tends to be slow and fragmented, the presence of a “web champion” is paramount to the success of the project, Internet adoption is faster with the recognition of a business need, and supported the evidence that an SME is more likely to adopt e-commerce when the SME owner has a positive attitude to IT. just under half of total enterprise employment in Ireland. Therefore, significant opportunities exist for the Irish SME sector to create efficiencies in communications, shift the trading power balance in its favour and create new markets (Egan et al, 2003).