Factors Affecting E-commerce Adoption of Small and Medium Enterprises in Sri Lanka: Evidence from Retail Sector

Purpose: There is a resistance in the adoption of e-commerce in certain parts of the world even though most successful businesses in the world has successfully adopted e-commerce to their businesses gained an increasing success. The study aims to find the crucial factors affecting to the adoption of e-commerce by using the evidence of retail sector in Sri Lanka as a developing nation.

Methods: The targeted population for the study was the retail sector registered as Small and Medium Enterprises in Colombo District. Adopting stratified simple random sampling technique, the study selected 200 SMEs in Colombo District who are engaged in retail sector. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Five dimensions namely adoption of e-commerce, perceived benefits, computer literacy, government support and technology infrastructure were measured by using a Likert scale measurement items, acknowledging the prior studies.

Findings: The results revealed that computer literacy, government support and technology infrastructure had significance influence on e-commerce adoption of SMEs in Sri Lanka even though perceived benefits had less impact on e-commerce adoption.

Implication: It has been realized that Sri Lankan government support and intervention is necessary to build speedy technology infrastructure in order to encourage the usage of e-commerce as government support and technology infrastructure share a significant correlation with e-commerce adoption.