SMEs' e‐commerce adoption: perspectives from Denmark and Australia

Purpose The paper aims to provide an insight about factors affecting business‐to‐business e‐commerce adoption and implementation in small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), highlighting similarities and differences between Danish and Australian SMEs. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on a wide literature review, focused on proposing a theoretical model of technological, environmental and organisational factors influencing e‐commerce adoption and implementation. Subsequently, a questionnaire based on the research model has been developed and face‐to‐face interviews were conducted in Danish and Australian companies. Findings The findings both corroborate previous results about significant factors affecting SMEs' business‐to‐business e‐commerce adoption and implementation and provide new, interesting insights. The study also finds many similarities and differences between Denmark and Australia. Research limitations/implications The main limitation relates to the difficulty of generalisation of the findings to a larger population of SMEs. To overcome this, a statistical survey is planned to be conducted in the future. Practical implications The results of the empirical research provide indication to SMEs interested to adopt business‐to‐business e‐commerce, large companies interested to conduct e‐commerce transactions with small and medium‐size companies and policy makers. Originality/value This paper both contributes to enhancing the understanding of the factors affecting business‐to‐business e‐commerce adoption and implementation in SMEs and provides some interesting perspectives from Denmark and Australia.