Free Accounting Dissertations - According To Daniel, E. Wilson, Hl, And Myers, A., E-commerce Is A Cluster Of
According to Daniel, E. Wilson, Hl, and Myers, A., e-commerce is a cluster of innovations. Regarding the SMEs, these will adopt e-commerce in a sequence of stages. Different types of organizations in terms of size, revenue and location, even within the same industry, are also expected to develop distinct strategies. We therefore expect that the current level of usage of e-commerce by SMEs, that is their stage of adoption, will depend upon contextual variables both at an industry and organizational level. The stage of adoption currently reached by a firm will depend on contextual variables both at an industry and an organizational level. Their research was based on cluster analysis, which is a technique for grouping cases or entities (in this case firms) into groups that are coherent according the attributes of interest (here this is activities being undertaken by e-commerce) whilst also distinguishing each group from others that differ according to these attributes. It is inductive in that the number and characteristics of the groups are not known prior to the analysis. The four cluster (that were produced by the use of this method) can be described as follows: a) Cluster 1 (Developers). These companies had the lowest levels of operational e-commerce services, b) Cluster 2 (Communicators). The companies in cluster 2 were making extensive use of email to communicate with customers and suppliers (90%) and the web to find business information (78%). They were also frequently using email for communication between employees (57%) and electronically exchanging documents and designs with customers and suppliers (56%). In this group the most common development activity is focused on the development of websites to provide company or product and service information (73% and 59% respectively), c) Cluster 3 (Web Presence). Companies in cluster 3 were undertaking all of the activities currently being undertaken by companies in cluster 2. That is, they were using email to communicate with customers and suppliers (95%), using the web to find external information (81%), using email between employees (63%) and electronically exchanging documents and designs (56%). They were also operating the services that cluster 2 companies were still currently developing. That is, they have websites that provide information about their company (98%) and its products and services (89%), d) Cluster 4 (Transactors).
