Critical Factors in the decision to adopt e-business: Evidence from Australian transport and logistics companies
AbstractPurpose In the era of globalisation and information and communications technology, ebusinessis one of the critical issues in transport and logistics companies competition andgrowth. This study seeks to investigate the effect of various factors on the decision to adopte-business among transport and logistics companies.Design/methodology/approach A two-stage analysis approach is applied to the data setobtained from a combination of online and mail surveys of Australian transport and logisticscompanies. In the first stage, factor analysis is applied to identify the principal componentsthat represent various factors influential to the e-business adoption decision. In the secondstage, the logit model is applied to further analyse the effect of individual variables on thefirms decision to adopt e-business.Findings Several key factors significantly affect the e-business adoption decision. The firstfactor represents the benefits of e-business including improved competitiveness, servicedifferentiation, value adding, improved customer services and supply chain integration. Thesecond factor concerns the barriers to e-business adoption including large initial cost,financial constraints, and high operating and maintaining costs. The third factor concerns theeffect of labour cost and policies on the adoption decision. The analysis results shed light onthe behaviour of transport and logistics companies and the sectors overall view towardadoption of e-business.Research limitations/implications The study and surveys main focus is on firmsinvestment decisions and expectations. Due to the research ethics requirements, the surveycould not seek individual companies historical data for profit, revenue and cost which couldbe used to test for the effect of financial constraints. Instead, this effect is revealed by askingfirms whether or not they are subject to financial constraints.Originality/value This study takes the view that a decision to adopt e-business isessentially an investment decision. However, existing investment theories such asJorgensons (1963) neoclassical theory and Tobins (1968) Q theory only concern theinvestment expenditure amount rather than the investment decision which is binary.Moreover, the role of business expectation has been largely ignored in empirical studies. Thecurrent study seeks to address these issues by investigating the effect of various factors on thedecision to adopt e-business using data obtained from a company survey rather thansecondary data.
Year of publication: |
2011
|
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Authors: | Nguyen, H-O |
Publisher: |
Australian Conference of Economists |
Subject: | Applied Economics | Transport Economics |
Saved in:
freely available
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