Current progress of e-commerce adoption: small and medium enterprises in Hong Kong

Despite the recent cooling of technology hype and the subsequent plummet in globalstock markets, e-commerce has been the most popular, yet controversial, topic bothin the business environment and in the academic arena. Enterprises must be involvedin e-business to some extent to stay competitive. In Hong Kong, most large enter-prises have adopted e-commerce applications to support their daily business activities.However, the e-commerce adoption status for Hong Kong small and medium-sizedenterprises (SMEs) is still not fully known.This research aims to examine the current status of e-commerce adoption inHong Kong’s SMEs, and will focus on opportunities and benefits, as well as practicaland perceived barriers to adopting e-commerce. By analyzing our findings and com-paring the results with similar studies from other Asia-Pacific countries [2, 4, 5, 7, 8],this article presents the current situation of SME e-commerce deployment in HongKong. Our examination of current views and expectations of e-commerce can assistcompanies in identifying major concerns, and exploring e-commerce opportunities inthis globalized marketplace.Survey questionnaires were distributed to members of the Hong Kong ExecutivesClub and the Hong Kong Women Professionals and Entrepreneurs Association. Thesurvey consisted of scaled multiple choice and open-ended questions for textualcomments. In addition, senior management representatives of the companies sur-veyed were invited to participate in one-on-one interviews. Of the approximately 70surveys collected from the two organizations, a total of 44 fit our SME criteria. Thirtytwo percent of these companies were categorized as service companies, and theremaining 68% as manufacturing companies. Following are highlights of the com-puter usage and e-commerce capabilities of our SME respondents: