Theoretical and Empirical Study on Critical Success Factors for Small Service Business in E-Commerce

Three well known theory frameworks have provided theoretical reasons for identifying factors a small business would use to successfully employ e-commerce technologies in their organization: the technology organization environment framework, the chain of causality and the resource-based view. In this paper, the critical success factors affecting the adoption and continued use of e-commerce technologies are studied. The critical success factors model was developed to study adoption and use of e-commerce technologies by small service businesses. The model is empirically tested using data collected from 153 participants from 34 small service business firms. Analyses and results suggest that the employee's computer expertise, the decision maker's ability and willingness to innovate, and the degree to which e-commerce technologies integrate with existing infrastructure significantly affect the success of small service business firms in EC environment.