An empirical study on electronic commerce diffusion in the Malaysian shipping industry

Electronic commerce (E-commerce) refers to business transactions conducted over computer networks, both public and private; it is about electronic interactions among businesses, goverments and consumers for the purpose of information retrieval, trading, procurement, purchasing and delivery of digitalized goods and services. At industry level, the development of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has become central to the concept of E-commerce. It is an important foundation block for the implementation of E-business. To harness the capability of EDI, Port Klang was facilitated with the national EDI by Dagang Net under the government's trade facilitation programme. The government hopes that EDI applications will bring about greater efficiency and productivity and also be able to respond to the needs and changing requirements of trade if a port is to become a major port of call for shipping lines the world over. A decade has passed since the introduction of EDI to the shipping industry in the Port Klang area. An understanding of the current EDI status is essential for the success of any E-commerce initiatives in Malaysia. Thus this study seeks to provide such an empirical base. This study found that in the Malaysian shipping industry, EDI was primarily used in transactions with the Customs Department for duty payments and import/export declaration. The results indicated that EDI usage at Port Klang might be high in terms of volume. However, its use was still very low and limited in terms of diversity, breadth and depth. There was hardly any transaction between other business partners except the Customs Department. Investigation on the feasibility factors revealed that initial investments, requirements of trading partners and software related issues were the major problems faced by these companies.