E-Commerce Adoption Among Malaysian SMEs: Key Drivers and Business Performance Implications

By examining the impact of e-commerce adoption among Malaysian SMEs, this paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge and provides valuable insights for policymakers, business owners, and researchers. The paper aims to identify factors that influence e-commerce adoption and to examine potential impact of these factors on the e- commerce adoption on the performance of small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in Malaysia. The underpinning theories are based on the Technology Acceptance Model to identify significant factors to e-commerce adoption and the Technology-Organization-Environment Framework to assess the impact of these factors on the e-commerce adoption performance. E-commerce adoption performance is measured by improved business performance, improved cost-efficiency and supported all elements in the business entity. Questionnaires were distributed to 379 respondents who were owners of SMEs in the Southern region of Malaysia and 211 completed questionnaires were returned by respondents. The data were analysed using the SPSS. The independent variables of Technology Acceptance Model, namely, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, technological readiness, and organizational readiness. The study results indicate significant relations between three of these variables, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, technological readiness, and the e-commerce adoption performance. This substantiates existing evidence on the role played by e- commerce adoption for the performance of SMEs.