Barriers to Doing Business on the Internet
There are a number of potential barriers for SMEs conducting business on the Internet. Technical factors such as access to broadband (ADSL or ISDN) and application of appropriate e-business software could present difficulties to some firms. However, access to simple dial up connections and website hosting is widespread. Therefor this study focused on the barriers arising from organizational and environmental factors, such as risk aversion, resistance to change, lack of resources or lack of the necessary skills. As shown in Figure 4, all such barriers were perceived as being relatively low in significance. The highest barrier for all categories of firms was lack of technical skills, but even this was rated on average less than 2.5 in importance on a 5-point scale. Lack of knowledge about e-commerce was the second highest barrier, followed by insufficient funding. All three categories of firms, MFG, SER and HITECH appeared to rate the significance of barriers about equally. These findings might suggest that SMEs are unlikely to hold back their involvement in e-business in the future due to major internal or environmental barriers.