E-Commerce in manufacturing firms: panacea or myth?

E-commerce is increasingly seen as a means towards achieving competitive advantage in today’s turbulent environment. In this paper, we examine the degree of emphasis placed on e-commerce by 209 manufacturing firms in the UK. The analysis indicates that less than 40% of SMEs are actively involved in e-commerce – a figure much less than envisioned. However, in addition to their emphasis on e-commerce, these firms significantly differ from firms that so far have not become actively involved in e-commerce. They place a much stronger emphasis on the factors needed to compete, achieve greater overall performance and tend to be more customer orientated. In addition, they also tend to be larger firms rather than firms employing less than 20 people. These findings provide strong encouragement to SME managers to consider an
active involvement in e-commerce as a means towards competitive advantage.