IT-Supported Business Performance and E-Commerce Application in SMEs

Literature Review

Sylvie Feindt and Judith Jeffcoate (2002) focused on the baby gazelles of the Internet economy, and demonstrated links between critical success factors. In this paper, the author highlights the competitive advantage deriving from the application of a certain critical success factor that is E-commerce. Murray E. Jennex (2004) research the key infrastructure factors affecting the success of small companies in developing economies, the result shows that workers' skills, client interface, and technical infrastructure are the most important factors to the success of a B2B E-commerce relationship. Christina A. Fader (2002) provided a model that identifies a number of unique factors that should be considered when estimating the optimal level of investment into an e-commerce initiative, and pointed out there are several constraints for SMEs to adopt E-commerce such as lack expertise in digital marketing and sales, insufficient resources required for ideal levels of investment and other creative cost and risk. Elie Elia and Louis-A (2007) presented empirical data from an electronic survey conducted among 96 manufacturing SMEs to investigate e-commerce initiatives and their related benefits. The research findings point to four main profiles of manufacturing SMEs with different e-commerce focuses.