European Journal of Information Systems, Special Issue on Managing
e-Business Transformation, 2003, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 251-268.
E-Business
Adoption by European Firms:
A
Cross-Country Assessment of the Facilitators and Inhibitors
Kevin Zhu*, Kenneth Kraemer, and Sean Xu
Center for Research
on Information Technology and Organizations
Abstract
In this study we developed a conceptual model for studying
the adoption of electronic business (e-business or EB) at the firm level,
incorporating six adoption facilitators and inhibitors, based on the
technology-organization-environment theoretical framework. Survey data from
3,100 businesses and 7,500 consumers in eight European countries were used to
test the proposed adoption model. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis to
assess the reliability and validity of constructs. To examine whether adoption
patterns differ across different e-business environments, we divided the full
sample into high EB-intensity and low EB-intensity countries. After controlling
for variations of industry and country effects, the fitted logit
models demonstrated four findings: (1) Technology
competence, firm scope and size,
consumer readiness, and competitive pressure are significant
adoption drivers, while lack of trading
partner readiness is a significant adoption inhibitor; (2) As EB-intensity
increases, two environmental factors––consumer readiness and lack of trading
partner readiness––become less important, while competitive pressure remains
significant; (3) In high EB-intensity countries, e-business is no longer a
phenomenon dominated by large firms; as more and more firms engage in
e-business, network effect works to the advantage of small firms; (4) Firms are
more cautious in adopting e-business in high EB-intensity countries – it seems
to suggest that the more informed firms are less aggressive in adopting
e-business, a somehow surprising result. Explanations and implications are
offered.
Key words:
Electronic business, adoption, empirical data, technology
competence, readiness, firm scope,
* Contacting author: Professor Kevin Zhu, Graduate School
of Management, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-3125, USA; Email: kzhu@uci.edu.