Empirical Study on adoption and institutionalization of B2B e- commerce in SMEs in Saudi Arabia

Experts and business pundits forecast drastic changes of e-commerce climate in Saudi Arabia when this country became an official member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2005. In fact over a last decade, many Saudi Arabian enterprises have adopted e-commerce, however almost at the entry level. In this research, a research model of e-commerce adoption and institutionalization is developed based on the Technology-Organization-Environment framework. Data collected from 133 small and medium-sized enterprises who are adopters in the country was analyzed. The results showed that (1) major factors affecting on initial adoption of e-commerce were very different from those influencing institutionalization of the technology and (2) experience of small and medium adopters of e-commerce did not significantly influence whether or not they move up towards e-commerce sophistication. Both theoretical and practical implications in promoting ecommerce adoption by SMEs in advanced developing economies, such as Saudi Arabia, are discussed. Key-words: e-commerce adoption, e-commerce institutionalization, SMEs, Saudi Arabia WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on COMPUTERS Almaaf Bader Ali A., Jian-Jun Miao, Quang-Dung Tran E-ISSN: 2224-2872 189 Volume 15, 2016