The perspective on e-commerce from SMEs

This paper examines the perspective on electronic commerce (EC) from small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that have adopted EC, and aims to understand their EC performance. Specifically, we analyze the importance placed by the EC adopters on specific cost elements, types of budgets, success factors and the reasons that drive SMEs to implement an EC investment. From this analysis, there are following findings: the majority of EC adopters have not yet made significant revenues from EC, in comparison to their total revenues. They also spend only a small portion of their budget expenses to EC. EC is perceived rather as a strategic issue, and therefore operational aspects are somewhat downplayed. EC program of SMEs is not extremely resource demanding. Even though EC is not a major tool for cost reduction, it provides significant benefits that can help SMEs to overcome the limitations of their size.