An Empirical Analysis of the Adoption Barriers of E-commerce in Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) with implementation of Technology Acceptance Model

Entrance of electronic technologies to the field of trade has caused many changes in the business environment and competition and has caused a large number of companies to pay attention to E-commerce methods and some of them succeed to obtain a lot of advantages and benefits from them. Small and Medium sized Enterprises are forced to use electronic technologies to survive in the competitive environment and gain more market share against large companies. But in this way they are faced with problems. Therefore, the challenges and limitations of these companies should be examined in the adoption of e-commerce. The aim of this study is to identify the main obstacles and challenges of E-commerce adoption by SMEs. The aim of the present study is applied and data collection is descriptive -survey and correlational. The study population consisted of managers and experts of companies in the industrial city of Bushehr (Iran). Total sample size is 157 people from 86 companies that were collected by convenient sampling data. Data were collected by using a questionnaire. The validity of questionnaire was confirmed through the content validity and reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Analyzing the data was done by structural equation modeling via partial least squares method by the help of smart PLS software. The results showed that organizational barriers, technical barriers and environmental barriers as external factors on technology has effected on two starter variables of technology acceptance model that includes usefulness and perceived ease and this predicted relationships are confirmed. In addition, expressed relationships in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), including the impact of usefulness and perceived ease on attitude, impact of attitude on Intention and finally impact of Intention on actual use was confirmed.