Adding clicks to bricks: a case study of e-commerce adoption by a Catalan small retailer
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Adding clicks to bricks: a case study of e-commerce adoption by a Catalan small retailer Alemayehu Molla1, Richard Heeks2 and Isaac Balcells3 1 School of Business Information Technology, RMIT University, Level 17, Melbourne, Australia; 2 IDPM, Harold Hankins Building, Precinct Centre, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9QH U.K.; 3AMEC SPIE Ibe´rica, IMISA de Mantenimiento y Montaje, S.A., Gran Vı´a 8-10 planta 2da, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain
Correspondence: Alemayehu Molla, School of Business Information Technology, RMIT University, Level 17, 239-251 Bourke Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia. Tel: þ 613 9925 5803; Fax: þ 613 9925 5850; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract This paper explores why and how one small business adopted e-commerce. Understanding the importance of a chronological perspective, the paper first develops a conceptual model that explicitly incorporates both different stages of e-commerce functionality and the different phases of the e-commerce adoption process. It relates these to a set of adoption factors classified into contextual, organisational, managerial, and e-commerce-specific categories. The paper explores and illustrates the model with the case history of a wine retailing microenterprise based in Catalonia, Spain that ultimately failed. The presented model is found to provide a workable basis for analysis, and the findings demonstrate the way in which different factors affect different phases of the adoption process. More generally, it finds expected contextual factors such as competitors or customers to have little impact on adoption, which is affected more by informal processes and social relations. The paper ends by questioning the simplicity of progressive e-commerce models that fail to incorporate abandonment of the technology, and fail to account for the lack of business value that some e-commerce projects deliver. The case’s chronological approach also identifies the path-dependent manner in which earlier decisions impact later e-commerce trajectories, with short-term, subjective decisions potentially constraining e-commerce in the longer term. European Journal of Information Systems (2006) 15, 424–438. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000623 Keywords: e-commerce adoption; microenterprise; SMEs; case study; Europe; Spain
Introduction
Received: 25 June 2004 Revised: 15 July 2005 2nd Revision: 5 December 2005 3rd Revision: 22 March 2006 Accepted: 17 May 2006
The purpose of this paper is to analyse e-commerce adoption in small firms (defined in the European Union as those with less than 50 employees and annual turnover of less than 10 m Euro), focusing particularly on the factors and phases that underpin the adoption process. The paper adopts a case study approach, based on the case of a wine retailer in Catalonia, Spain. A small firm focus was selected because such firms combine an economic significance with particular challenges to e-commerce adoption. In Europe, for example, they represent 99% of all firms (EC, 2003). They also contribute d
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