Analysis and research on factors promoting the proliferation of electronic commerce at small and medium sized Japanese enterprises

Electronic commerce (EC) has expanded and proliferated throughout the world together with the advance of information technology (IT) to become a permanent fixture of doing business. However, the main players are still overwhelmingly large-scale enterprises, whereas the number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) implementing EC is decidedly small. What are the factors that obstruct the implementation of EC, whose start-up costs are low and which is highly user friendly, at SMEs? The main purpose of this paper is to provide an answer this question. 4,500 enterprises were surveyed for this paper, and the results show that the enterprises that implement EC, as opposed to those that do not, often have section chief-level managers who have the authority to make decisions of intent regarding IT strategies.