An empirical study on factors affecting e-commerce adoption among SMEs in west Malaysia

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a major role in most developing countries because they are able to improve and develop the economy. e-Commerce is also an important topic in vari-ous research fields as it brings about benefits to these countries. However, the adoption of e-Commerce by SMEs in developing countries is low due to several factors. Therefore, a parsimony framework has been proposed to investigate the factors which influence the adoption of e-Commerce among SMEs in West Malaysia. Three factors are considered in this research, namely Perceived Barriers, Organization Readiness, and Competitor Pressures. Questionnaires were used for data collection while SmartPLS was used to analyze the data. The results showed that Perceived Barriers contain negative significant influence on the adoption of e-Commerce among medium-sized SMEs, but not for small-sized SMEs. Organization Readiness shows a huge difference between small and medium-sized SMEs. Competitor Pressures are important for both small and medium-sized SMEs. In conclusion, the results obtained will assist and enable stakeholders to restructure e-Commerce applications which fulfill the needs of their organization and therefore, increase the effectiveness of the organization