Levels of Business to Business E-Commerce Adoption and Competitive Advantage in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Comparison Study Between Egypt and the United States

Abstract

Business-to-business e-commerce adoption has become increasingly important for small and medium-sized enterprises, allowing them to gain and sustain competitive advantage. B2B adopted at different levels based on different resource endowments leads to competitive advantage being gained and sustained in proportion to that level of adoption. This study uses structural equation modelling to investigate how levels of B2B e-commerce adoption affects and contributes to gaining and sustaining competitive advantage in both US and Egyptian manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises. The key finding is that small and mediumsized enterprises can achieve growth in market share and sales that helps them to improve their position in the global market through higher levels of business-to-business e-commerce adoption. Implications of the study, its limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.

Effects of business to business e-commerce adoption on competitive advantage of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises

“…The use of e-commerce growth model is very vital in providing a holistic description of the stages or levels of B2B ecommerce (Lefebvre et al, 2005). Since the evolution of e-commerce, scholars have developed e-commerce growth models due to the growing relevance of IS within firms and their increasing role in global business (Elbeltagi et al, 2016;Teo & Pian, 2003). Scholars have proposed different types or levels of e-commerce adoption in SMEs as shown in Table 1.…”

“…SMEs in developed countries accounts for more than 90% of all enterprises and contributes almost 60% of jobs for the private sector (OECD, 2012). In developed countries, B2B e-commerce adoption has been the most successful strategy for growth of the e-commerce market (Elbeltagi, Hamad, Moizer, & Abou-Shouk, 2016). Therefore, SMEs in developing nations needs more consideration regarding B2B e-commerce adoption to enable them compete globally and sustain their significant contributions to employment and gross domestic product.…”

“…Likewise, other scholars tried to measure the relationship between IT adoption and competitive advantage (Bhatt, Emdad, Roberts, & Grover, 2010), whereas most of these studies excluded other competitive advantage related dimensions and focused only on a single competitive advantage construct (Gebauer & Schober, 2006;Seongbae & Silvana, 2014). The benefits obtainable from B2B e-commerce depends on the level of its adoption (Elbeltagi et al, 2016;Lefebvre, Lefebvre, Elia, & Boeck, 2005). The degree to which SMEs are prepared to adopt B2B e-commerce is proportionate to the adoption advantages they attain (Hamad et al, 2018).…”

The Role of Reputation For Achieving Competitive Advantage

“…Competitive advantage is broadly covered in the literature in terms of cost reductions, differentiation, growth, and quality (Elbeltagi et al, 2016). Competitive advantage means that the firm can produce goods or services that their customers find more valuable than the goods or services produced by their competitors (Saloner et al, 2001).…”

Resource Based View as a Strengthening of Industry’s Capabilities to Improve Competitive Strategies.

“…Competitive advantage consists of capabilities that enable organizations to differentiate itself from its competitors and is the result of important management decisions (Daghfous, 2004). Ambitious companies should always be concerned with how to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage (Elbeltagi et al, 2016). Product innovation and service innovation affect competitive advantage with competition in in foreign countries and needs to be a lifting capacity of supporting industries that can produce parts with quality, at a low cost which are delivered on time (Chamsuk et al, 2015).…”