E-commerce adoption in SMEs in Afghanistan: bypassing challenges | |
| Author | Nori, Nesar Ahmad |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.IM-19-02 |
| Subject(s) | Electronic commercee Electronic commerce--Afghanistan Small business--Afghanistan Internet in public administration--Evaluation--Afghanistan |
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Information Management, School of Engineering and Technology |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Series Statement | Thesis ; no. IM-19-02 |
| Abstract | E-commerce can be a major base for competitive advantage for most business categories, mainly small and medium-sized (SME) businesses. E-commerce adoption started early in developed countries. In developing countries like Afghanistan, businesses particularly SMEs still face challenges in the adoption of e-commerce. This thesis aims to identify SMEs’ ecommerce adoption challenges in Afghanistan, prioritize them, and provide suggestions to solve those challenges. This thesis surveys the factors that prevent e-commerce adoption in SMEs in Afghanistan from Business to customers (B2C) perspective. This research considers two independent research streams, preventing factors from owners and managers perspective and preventing factors from customers’ perspective that prevent e-commerce adoption in SMEs in Afghanistan. This research surveys challenges regarding e-commerce adoption, prioritize main challenges and suggest recommendations. This study considers three categories of influential factors have been identified in the past researches in e-commerce adoption. This study is inspired by SME and customer e-commerce barrier adoption models from previous studies. We listed common challenges from previous studies. To get a deep understanding of factors, a semi-structured interview was conducted with experts. Later two different questionnaires were pilot tested and distributed to SMEs and customers to generalize the findings. In the end, analysis of collected of data demonstrated that eleven challenges regarding SME and three challenges regarding customers existed. This study suggested an e-commerce adoption model and also provided suggestions to overcome those challenges and further studies. |
| Year | 2019 |
| Corresponding Series Added Entry | Asian Institute of Technology. Thesis ; no. IM-19-02 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology (SET) |
| Department | Department of Information and Communications Technologies (DICT) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Information Management (IM) |
| Chairperson(s) | Chutiporn Anutariya; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Vatcharaporn Esichaikul;Matthew N. Dailey; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE), Afghanistan; |
| Degree | Thesis (M. Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2019 |