Business Environment and Internet Commerce Benefit - a Small Business Perspective

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence shows that the internet can enablea start up company to globalise and achieve multi-million dollar turnover in acouple of years. Beyond this handful of examples, small businesses find thatthis is not always true. It seems that certain pre-conditions need to be inplace before this is possible. We studied the business environment of a small business including itssuppliers, customers, partner firms and competitors focusing on internetcommerce adoption and usage. Among a sample of small firms in thenon-manufacturing sector, the impression of competitive advantage andinformation support relates positively to internet commerce benefit. Also, customer participation in internet commerce is critical to success. Wetherefore suggest that the nature of the business environment bears an effecton the benefit small businesses can gain from internet commerce.(Publication abstract)

Keywords: Knowledge-based firms, Startups, Electronic commerce, Competitive advantages, Internet, Business conditions, Service industries, Customer relations, Information sources