A Case Study of E-commerce Adoption in Jordanian Small and Medium Enterprises ( SMEs )

Nowadays the adoption of electronic commerce in business operations is no longer a concession to large organizations. The SMEs also are trying to adopt e-commerce in their business operations to gain the benefits of using it. The SMEs is considered to be playing a major role in economic growth for most nations. The SMEs in Jordan, which is a developing country, made up the vast majority of the Jordanian enterprises where about 98% of the manufacturing and service enterprises are SMEs. Despite the enormous attention given to encourage the SMEs to adopt e-commerce by the government, e-commerce adoption level is still low. It is, therefore, the aim of this paper to identify the factors that contribute towards the adoption of e-commerce by SMEs in their business operations. A case study research was carried out to identify factors that determine the varying extent of e-commerce adoption in SMEs. The findings of the case studies showed that security, online payment, awareness of e-commerce and external IT support are barriers for e-commerce adoption in Jordan.