EC Adoption and Critical Success Factors of EC in SMEs in Iran

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is changing the way organizations carry out their responsibilities, cooperate with customers and running their business usually. E-commerce in practice is not only the buying and selling of products via electronic means, it involves all other activities to support the sale process. To take advantage of e-commerce, during the late 1990s many companies expanded their business activities to reach new customers and/or to offer new opportunities to their existing customers. During the same time there has been significant growth of new established companies implementing e- commerce technologies, commonly known as dot-com companies (Lovelock, 2001).However, investigates show that there have been significant breakdowns along with these companies and it is now time to look back and learn from the mistakes of the past. Besides many researches have indicated that significant benefits are achieved by those SMEs that adopt and use Ecommerce in their organizations This survey attempts to explore the importance of an adoption approach for e-commerce technology in Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Iran. This research hypothesized ten factors as influencing e-commerce adoption significantly in SMEs: eAdvantage, eCost, eTransformation, Size, eProduct, eSupport, ePressure, eCompetiotion, eNnovativeness and eNvolvement. Besides, the research attempts to identify other factor/s rather than these ten factors which are influencing the e-commerce adoption from SMEs point of views. Further, the approach differentiates between adopters and non adopters in terms of the adopted EC as: Non-adopters, Starters and Adopters. The research results point to: (1) Non-adopters: the movement towards Internet and email was dependent on the cost and financial resources for initial investments: (2) Starters: the first stage of EC adoption was dependent on technological support provided by vendors and innovativeness of the manager: (3) Adopters: the adoption of more EC was dependent on e-support, ennovativeness, e-pressure, e-cost and e-advantage. Public awareness and Public purchasing behavior were other significant factors identified by Starters and Adopters. This research also attempts to develop an approach for electronic commerce success. Key factors influencing e-commerce success were identified from literature review and categorized as Internal Drivers/ Obstacles and External Drivers/ Obstacles. In this respect, two studied models by other researchers are examined and the contribution of each factor is re-studied to fit to market of Iran. However, in area of e-commerce adoption Cultural Factors: Public Purchasing Behavior and Public Awareness are recognized as unique factors affecting e-commerce adoption among SMEs in Iran. This survey also found out poor EC Adopted Banking System as an external obstacle in e-commerce success process in Iran.Validerat; 20101217 (root