AN INVESTIGATION ABOUT THE IMPACTS OF E-COMMERCE ADOPTION ON EXPORT PERFORMANCE

Current study is devoted to provide empirical evidence about the relationship between two constructs, e-commerce adoption and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) export performance. Primary question of this research is how e-commerce can help SMEs to reduce the impacts of export barriers and improve their export performance. The structured questionnaire of the study was applied to SMEs managers and export decision makers from Iranian SMEs, and 114 usable responses were gathered for data analyses. Findings from statistical analyses showed that e-commerce adoption could help SMEs from developing countries to contact with customer easily, be more competitive in foreign markets, coping with regulations of the host country, and efficiently manage the foreign exchange fluctuations as the most important challenges for SMEs in developing countries. SMEs managers should consider e-commerce as a facilitator in initial steps of going international if they want to play an active role in the global market.