Hendryk Setiawan, Karina Puteri, Nikko Sucahyo, Noventina K N |

Summary of Article:
A preliminary study of ecommerce adoption in developing countries
This paper mainly discuss about the possible determinant of ecommerce technologies
adoption among users in developing countries. It is important to be learned as it is considered to
be the essential ingredient for socio-economic advancement in developing countries, yet there is
no sufficient data yet in regards to the conditions and contingencies surrounding ecommerce
adoption in developing countries. In the context of the study, the term ecommerce encompasses a
wide variety of activities over the internet involving the exchange of information and data or
value based exchanges between two or more parties, spanning across businesses (B2B),
consumers (B2B, B2C, C2C) and governments (G2B, G2C).
In developing countries in which purchasing power is low and lack of streamlined
payment mechanism, ecommerce is often skewed towards information rather than product
consumption. However, this information-centric ecommerce has still gained unlikely adopters.
Even though it is offering unprecedented opportunities for economic growth and development,
ecommerce adoption has been sporadic in the developing world. In 2002, while developed
countries contributed towards 95% of ecommerce, Africa and Latin America accounted for less
than 1%. It is then raised the question about the condition and contingencies that can explain
ecommerce adoption in developing countries, and the pattern of user behavior related to
ecommerce technologies in developing countries.
Prior research has been focused on two parallel streams of research converging on IT
adoption: research from the positivist school has concentrated on objective, statistical treatment
of predominantly variance models of diffusion and adoption; whilst the interpretivist school has
conducted more focused studies in the sociology and phenomenology of user understanding and
construction of reality. The paper follows and influenced by positivist researches on IT adoption,
such as the Diffusion Theory which looks at key characteristics of technological innovations to
trace their impact on adoption and Technology Acceptance Model which is a parsimonious
model that looks at key behavioral elements that influence decision making related to IT
adoption. These elements are perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social influence, and
facilitating conditions. Both TAM and Diffusion Theory examine the mechanism defining
behavioral cues towards adopting an IT artifact.

Hendryk Setiawan, Karina Puteri, Nikko Sucahyo, Noventina K N |

There are four hypotheses to be examined in the study, which are developed based on the
TAM elements. First is that performance expectancy about ecommerce will have a positive effect
on ecommerce adoption in developing countries and that perceptions of economic usefulness will
be more strongly related to performance expectancy than social or strategic usefulness. Second is
that social influence from compliance, identification and internalization will have a positive
effect on ecommerce adoption in developing countries, with identification being the most
important determinant of social influence. Third is that technological opportunism will have a
positive effect on ecommerce adoption among users in developing countries. The last, for users
in developing countries, facilitating conditions will positively moderate the relationship between
user perceptions towards ecommerce technologies and ecommerce adoption.
The data collected for the research are done by sending out surveys that are administered to
users in developing countries by the help of the few agencies of the UN, alongside with NGOs.
The surveys were developed and administered by the platform of WebSurveyor 3.0. the survey
was administered online and was accessible in the timeframe of December 2005 to February
2006. The final count of the survey recorded total of 172 respondents from 37 countries, which
calculated to the final response rate of 37.7%.
Participants included entrepreneurs (16%) and employees of both private and public sectors
with the percentage of 31% and 53%. The numbers of respondents varied between four and six
for each of the 37 countries. All respondents were local, and met the requirements of computer
efficacy and had adopted some form of information technology skills in the past 2 years prior to
the survey. 15.3% of the respondents were female, and 84.7% were male respondents. Age
ranged from 32 to 51, with average age of 39.2 years old with standard deviation of 4.3. The
average GDP of the 37 countries where the survey administered were $5133 (SD = $1131.4),
ranging from $1532 and $13111, which were consistent with the overall statistics of developing
country, thus the respondents were possibly representative of the population.
The respondents were asked to thoroughly understand the researchs understanding of the
definition of Ecommerce. All items of survey were measured on Likert-type scales starting from
1 for strongly disagree, 5 for neither agree nor disagree, and 7 for strongly agree. All items
were re-coded and transformed to a seven-scale metric to assure consistency and eliminate
indeterminancy.

Hendryk Setiawan, Karina Puteri, Nikko Sucahyo, Noventina K N |

The research model was analyzed using partial least squares (PLS). The results of the analysis
showed that economic usefulness was the most important dimension of performance expectancy,
further put compliance as the most important dimensions of social influence, and access and
policy-related facilitation were the most important dimensions of facilitating conditions. From
the general perspective, the results suggested to strengthen the contingencies (moderators)
surrounding Ecommerce adoption in the developing countries.
The research showed that the Ecommerce adoption directly influenced by the performance
expectancy and social influence. However, the socio-economic climate plays the crucial role of
the moderating agent of the Ecommerce adoption. The research further redefined the popular
beliefs regarding to the Ecommerce adoption, offering the multiple contributions and
implications for theory and practice. First is that in developing countries, facilitating conditions
of the country plays a big role of Ecommerce adoption. Second, the research put second-order
constructs by separating the underlying dimensions, creating and/or refining measures, validating
those measures and test them to find the relative weights of the dimensions as a part of the whole
model. Third, countries with a favorable iT policy offer a more conducive environment for
Ecommerce adoption, implicating a belief that the technology will promote infrastructure
growth, and those infrastructure would be made available and be incorporate within the
functioning of the society. Fourth, the study shows that given positive facilitating conditions,
technological opportunism can herald in successful Ecommerce initiatives.
Performance expectancy, comprises of expectancies of economic, social, or strategic
usefulness. Social influence is defined by the dimensions of compliance, identification, and
internalization. The moderating role of facilitating conditions adds an important clue towards
understanding actual Ecommerce adoption in developing countries.
The research showed that the Ecommerce culture studied from the perspective of developing
countries, would not be able to represent the population due to the probable insufficiency of the
sample of respondents. The study was further limited by the different perspective and
considerations of general Ecommerce technologies of different countries regarding to the other
factors that might arose and not considered in the research. The study also attempted to establish
a causal model of Ecommerce adoption by the method of cross-sectional investigation. The other
limitations of the research was regarding the phenomenon and context of the study, the

Hendryk Setiawan, Karina Puteri, Nikko Sucahyo, Noventina K N |

Ecommerce model might shift overtime, and the research used the data as of 2006. In conclusion,
the study tried to find out the aspects that moves the growth of Ecommerce in developing
countries, resulting to varieties of insights of implementation behaviors across different
developing countries.