Analyzing the effects of electronic commerce on organizational performance: Evidence from small and medium enterprises

Abstract

The main purpose of this research is to study the impacts of electronic commerce (e-commerce) applications on the organizational performance of the Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). There are many different types of e-commerce applications that may influence the organizational performances; in this research, they are categorized into five different categories: electronic advertising, electronic payment system, electronic marketing, electronic customer support service and electronic order and delivery. According to literature review, most common types of organizational performance measures that are used in recent empirical researches are included: Financial or accounting performance, operational performance and market-based performance. For analyzing the data derived from questionnaire structural equation modeling (goodness of fit tests and path analysis) were used and the software used for analyzing the data were LISREL 8.54 and SPSS 18. The survey method was considered to be the most suitable research method for this investigation. On the whole, this paper illuminates significant relationships between applications of electronic commerce and operational and market based performance. The proposed measurement model exhibited a good level of model fit, too.   Key words: Electronic commerce, operational performance, organizational performance, market-based performance, financial performance, small and medium enterprises (SMEs).