پیش بینی سطح تجارت الکترونیک B2B در سازمان های صنعتی

Through the use of business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B e-commerce), leading companies are transforming interorganizational transaction processing, trading, and collaboration into a competitive advantage. The research empirically examines several models with B2B e-commerce overall use as the dependent variable and innovation characteristics, context, channel factors, and organizational structure as the predictor variables. The results demonstrate that compatibility with existing systems, cooperative norms with customers, lateral integration within a firm, technocratic specialization, and decentralization of information technology decisions facilitate B2B e-commerce overall use. In addition, large firms are more likely than small firms to have greater levels of B2B e-commerce and firms are more likely to use B2B e-commerce with customers that use recommendations rather than threats to encourage e-commerce use.

B2B e-commerce has been identified as an emerging trend, with companies planning strategies to capture benefits. It is estimated that worldwide B2B e-commerce transactions will reach $2775 billion in 2004—a growth of over $2500 billion since 2000 (eMarketer, 2001). There are also estimates that by 2004, B2B sales on the Internet will be six times larger than B2C sales (Haig, 2001). E-commerce may become the primary low-cost method for B2B transactions. Buyers and sellers benefit from the productivity and profitability improvements associated with e-commerce (Deeter-Schmelz et al., 2001). With a relatively small investment, companies can achieve remarkable savings: e.g., leaders in e-commerce achieved 41% improvement in cycle time and a 10% reduction in staff and can generate up to a 13:1 ROI by using the full potential of B2B e-commerce (Kearney, 2002). Yet, B2B e-commerce use has proved more difficult than expected. The community is looking for answers on how to proceed. The significance of B2B e-commerce makes it imperative to study it for three reasons: (1) it is becoming a viable alternative to traditional markets; (2) its commercial potential is enormous; and (3) little is known about the factors that influence the nature of firm participation (Grewal, Comer, & Mehta, 2001). The purpose of the study is to examine firm, context, and innovation characteristics related to B2B e-commerce (Fig. 1 displays the research framework). The hypotheses presented and tested allow a starting place to answer the following research questions: (1) Are B2B e-commerce compatibility with current systems and its perceived cost related to its overall use? (2) Are cooperative norms with customers and customer influence strategies related to overall use? (3) Is a firm's context in terms of size, production technology routineness, demand unpredictability, and process turbulence related to use? and (4) Is organizational structure (i.e., formalization, integration, specialization, and centralization) related to B2B e-commerce use?

Through a combination of interactivity, networking, and data processing, the Internet has made B2B e-commerce more accessible at a lower cost than older communication methods. B2B e-commerce helps firms avoid value migration (that is, capture of growth in revenue, profits, and market value by competing firms) attributable to declining market prices (disinflation), rising competitive intensity, advanced technology (enabling increased communication flows), and reverse marketing strategies (customer-focused rather than product-focused) (Sharma, 2002). The potential of B2B e-commerce is not captured by merely automating document printing and mailing operations of transactions, but by encompassing all trading steps and collaboration between business partners. Firms need to realize the importance of cross-firm process integration and make determined efforts to integrate B2B e-commerce in critical business processes. The study extends the current body of research in the area of B2B relationships by focusing on elements that facilitate B2B e-commerce use within manufacturers. Specifically, the effects of B2B e-commerce traits, channel factors, context, and organizational structure were tested. The findings are instructive because they show that these variables associate with B2B e-commerce adoption. Our results provide industrial marketers with information for self, trading partner, and competitive channel evaluations when considering B2B e-commerce applications. For adopter firms, the decision to adopt B2B e-commerce is difficult because of uncertainty, the possibility that prior investments may be rendered obsolete, and high switching costs. Yet if a new technology is promising, it will create attractive market opportunities (Srinivasan, Lilien, & Rangaswamy, 2002). For initiating firms, understanding what characteristics facilitate use of B2B e-commerce can help formulate strategy. The ultimate goal of the research is to help both potential adopters of B2B e-commerce as a selling and as a purchasing technology to become more effective by profiling adopters. The results of the research enable managers to perform self, partner, and competitive analyses. Managers provided with characteristics of B2B e-commerce adopting firms can determine if their firm has the characteristics that make them likely users of the technology as a selling technology. The same information can provide managers who want to adopt B2B e-commerce as a purchasing technology the tools to evaluate potential channel members with whom they should adopt B2B e-commerce. The findings also provide managers with market intelligence information. By knowing the characteristics of adopting channel members, managers will be able to determine the likelihood that a competing channel will adopt B2B e-commerce. Armed with this information, managers can proactively identify the profile of B2B e-commerce adopters and determine which competing channels are likely to use B2B e-commerce.