The Growth of E-Commerce in Developing Countries: An Exploratory Study of Opportunities and Challenges for SMEs

The growth of the Internet has opened up a vast arena, providing more opportunities for businesses, particularly small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to sell their products and services to a global audience than they would have been able to afford to reach using the traditional methods. SMEs are extremely important to many countries and their contribution to economy cannot be over emphasized. Several researchers have studied the contribution of the Internet and highlight the importance of convenience, satisfaction, quality, and consumer purchase behavior. In this study, it is argued that SMEs stand to benefit significantly from the opportunities and benefits that the Internet offers to businesses. Therefore, the use of the Internet is widely seen as critical for the competitiveness of SMEs in the emerging global market. The study is exploratory in nature and will be conducted in three stages. The findings presented in this paper, argues that SMEs in developing countries must learn from the experiences of developed countries, such as the United States and European countries, and use the Internet more frequently.