Internet in purchase processes of Polish SMEs

Growing popularity of information and communication technologies has a significant impact on the way how enterprises are conducting their purchase processes and make them less time and resource consuming, as well as environmentally aware due to the paperless communication. For quite a long period of time, mostly big enterprises have benefited from these solutions and attention of most researchers has been focused on them. The aim of this paper is to examine how small and medium-sized enterprises use Internet in their purchase processes (12 actions itemized in the purchase process were analysed). The available Internet tools included homepages of suppliers, company blogs, social networks, B2B e-commerce websites, B2B e-marketplaces, e-catalogues, e-requests, etc. The matter of the sources of information about suppliers was also raised. The author conducted a survey among 126 small and medium-sized enterprises from the Lower Silesia Region. It was aimed at learning their preferences as to how to use the Internet in the purchasing process, at evaluating the usage rate of individual solutions and at identifying the types of products bought via the Internet. Results of the research proved that Polish SMEs are familiarized with Internet tools that can be applied in the purchasing process, although these solutions are not very common, especially in small enterprises. A further research should be based on the interviews to identify deeply the reasons that prevent enterprises from using available solutions. Moreover, the author would like to verify whether there are some industries less amenable to using the new opportunities.