Adoption of B2B e-commerce by the SMEs in Bangladesh

Abstract

Like many other countries around the world Bangladesh's SMEs play strong role in employment generation as well as ensuring country's economic development. Although SMEs have the potentials, at the rapidly increasing age of internet, to utilise the newly emerged technology dependent communication and transaction medium, e-commerce, in acquiring their competitiveness, the slow rate of adoption is evident. The paper looks at the adoption of B2B electronic commerce by the SMEs exploring diversified factors and measures the effects of those factors in explaining the adoption rate. A descriptive research study was designed with the data collected from 222 SMEs through a self administered structured questionnaire. A multiple regression model was estimated to asses the factors influencing the adoption of e-commerce and estimate their effects, where adoption intention is considered as explained variable and business experience, internet usage, number of computer literate officer and revenue of company have been added with six attributes of innovation, relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, observability, and uncertainty are considered as explanatory variables. The study reports the effects of perceived compatibility, complexity, observability and uncertainty, company internet usage and number of computer literate officer appear as significant with the overall regression explaining 34.2% of willingness to adopt e-commerce. The paper concludes with some policy implications.

Keywords: B2B; E-Commerce; SMEs