Do Competitive Priorities Drive Adoption of Electronic Commerce Applications? Testing the Contingency and Institutional Views

This paper expands on recent research by Huang and colleagues examining the drivers of electronic commerce (e-commerce) adoption. Two competing theories are evaluated as predictors of e-commerce adoption: contingency theory and institutional theory. For the contingency view, we focus on three strategic priorities (cost, flexibility and delivery), and for the institutional view, we examine three institutional factors (region, industry and information technology benchmarking). The model is evaluated with logistic regression analysis using survey data from nine countries and three industries. While contingency theory is the norm in the literature, we find only limited evidence that competitive priorities guide e-commerce adoption. By contrast, institutional factors have greater explanatory power.