E-commerce adoption by European firms: a cross-country multilevel analysis

• Autor(a) principal: Gabriel, Paula Cristina Laranjeira
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/16372
• topic: E-commerce adoption; European firms; Confirmatory factor analysis; Multilevel analysis; Country level analysis; Comércio eletrónico; Empresa; Venda a retalho; Análise de mercado; União Europeia

E-commerce has been recognized as a new form of commerce and a fresh way to identify, target, and retain customers. However, firms are often uncertain about investing in the online channel as there is no guarantee this will result in consumers engaging in online transactions. The studies on e-commerce adoption usually distinguish the following three dimensions: environmental, technological, and organizational (Rodríguez-Ardura & Meseguer-Artola, 2010; Zhu, Kraemer, & Xu, 2003). There are few purely virtual firms, and the traditional channel and multichannels continue to be the predominant types of retail channels used by firms (Zhu, Kraemer, & Xu, 2006; Li, Troutt, Brandyberry, & Wang, 2011). This is due to the many obstacles faced by firms adopting e-commerce; more specifically, they must overcome important technical, cognitive, socio-political, economic, legal, managerial, financial, and cultural challenges (Zhu, Kraemer, & Xu, 2003; Molla & Licker, 2005; Kshetri, 2007). Given the heterogeneity of contexts, the factors constraining the adoption of ecommerce are not the same across firms and countries (digital divide). In light of this, our focus will be on firms that have not yet taken the decision to adopt e-commerce due to a set of restraints, and on analyzing the differences within- and between-countries. The research question to be answered is: What are the inhibitors of e-commerce adoption in each EU country? An analysis is made of the overall attitudes towards e-commerce adoption in European firms, linking specific deterrents of e-commerce adoption (e.g., higher delivery costs or the nature of business) and the following retailer characteristics: size, type of product, retail channels, and respondent’s position in the firm and engagement in distance selling. To explore the overall attitude towards e-commerce adoption, we propose a conceptual model that combines a two-level structure: the individual level, which models the attitudes towards barriers that prevent adoption of the online channel within each country; and the country level that highlights the similarities (and differences) between EU countries. The statistical model combines factorial and regression components. This model was estimated by the maximum likelihood method using the MPlus 6.12. CFI is 0.989, TLI is 0.984, and RMSEA is 0.034; therefore, model fit is excellent (Hu & Bentler, 1999). Results show that aspects such as firm size and the job position of respondents do not influence the attitudes toward e-commerce adoption. Three covariates point to theiv aversion to e-commerce: telesales/call center retailing, direct retail channels, and selling non-food products.