Adoption issues of business-to-business Internet commerce in European SMEs

This article presents the preliminary findings from an explorative case study concerning barriers, benefits and use of SMEs adoption of business-to-business Internet commerce. The main findings were that SMEs embrace the Internet mainly just by chance; the government and public administration are seen as the main change agents in the adoption and diffusion of Internet commerce among SMEs; cost is not an important factor in the adoption decision; setting up an advanced home page with a shopping basket for buying and selling on the Internet is often seen as a minus rather then a plus for competitive advantage; complementary factors among which digital imaging technologies and spreading of English as a common business language have to be developed in order to increase the value of Internet commerce to small business.