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Understanding e‐business adoption across industries in European countries

Tiago Oliveira (ISEGI – Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal)
Maria F. Martins (ISEGI – Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal)

Industrial Management & Data Systems

ISSN: 0263-5577

Article publication date: 28 September 2010

6040

Abstract

Purpose

The paper seeks to investigate the factors that affect the adoption of e‐business by firms belonging to European Union (EU) countries, by comparing the effect across two different industries: telecommunications (telco) and tourism.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from 2,459 firms belonging to EU27 countries across two industries. The data were analyzed by employing factorial analysis and relevant hypotheses were derived and tested by logistic regression analysis.

Findings

The results suggest that the perceived benefits and obstacles of e‐business, technology readiness, competitive pressure, and trading partner collaboration are the drivers that are important for both industries. Through the comparison of the industries, statistically significant differences between the telco and the tourism industries, i.e. the relative importance of all drivers for e‐business adoption differs between the industries, were found. The only exception is competitive pressure.

Research limitations/implications

The cross‐sectional nature of this paper does not allow knowing how this relationship will change overtime.

Practical implications

The findings offer valuable insight to managerial and policy makers; they should promote information and communication technology infrastructure, information technology training programmes to employees, and trading partner collaboration with business partners in each industry mainly in the tourism industry.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is one of the first that examines adoption of e‐business with a multi‐industries comparison of EU27 countries using a research model that combines the Tornatzky and Fleischer model and the Iacovou et al. model.

Keywords

Citation

Oliveira, T. and Martins, M.F. (2010), "Understanding e‐business adoption across industries in European countries", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 110 No. 9, pp. 1337-1354. https://doi.org/10.1108/02635571011087428

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2010, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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