24 JOURNAL OF NEW BUSINESS IDEAS AND TRENDS The Effect of Small Business Clusters in Prioritising Barriers to E-commerce Adoption in Regional SMEs

One of he most powerful forces affecting the world’s economy and commerce today is the substantial increase in globalisation through the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). Kaynak et al (2005) suggest that the rapid emergence of E-commerce has changed the nature of business so quickly and pervasively that where once it was revolutionary, now, it is simply evolutionary. There have been many studies of E-commerce in the small business sector (van Slyke et al 2005, Kaynak et al 2005, MacGregor et al 2005). A number of reasons have been put forward but principal among them has been the realisation that both at an academic as well as a government level that the small to medium enterprise (SME) sector is one of the cornerstones of economic prosperity in many countries (NOIE