An investigation into the factors influencing the adoption of B2B trading exchanges in small businesses

Small businesses, in general, play dominant roles in terms of employment generation and share in total business activities. However, studies have shown that small businesses are also slow in their uptake of modern technologies including electronic commerce. This paper presents the result of an empirical study that investigates the adoption behaviour of small businesses in relation to business-to-business (B2B) trading exchanges in the context of Western Australia. Following extensive literature review on innovation adoption–diffusion theories and qualitative field study, a research model was developed which treated six sets of antecedents of small business’s attitude towards B2B trading exchanges. The findings revealed that external influences raise the small business’s awareness of an innovation. This awareness leads to the evaluation of the perceived direct and indirect benefits and a positive evaluation leads to a positive attitude towards the innovation. The results confirmed that a positive attitude towards B2B trading exchanges leads to the intention to adopt B2B trading exchanges in small businesses. The findings also confirm that external, belief, contextual and control factors drive the attitude towards B2B trading exchanges. Implications of the results are highlighted.