Competitiveness of the SMES: The Factors Influencing Successful Implementation of E-Commerce and E-Supply within Romanian SMES Businesses

Abstract

There are many ways in which the firms’ competitiveness can be understood in the related literature. The main reason for addressing competitiveness at Romanian small and medium-sized businesses level is that, ultimately, competitiveness is measured and generated at the enterprise level, these being main actors of the Romanian economic life. It is one of the most used levels of analysis in the academic literature, due to the continuous desire for economic selfevaluation with the direct competitors in the field, using a series of simple tools that can be easily borrowed between firms. Despite the strong development of the Romanian IT&C sector in the last decade, most small and medium-sized businesses have not taken advantage of this new mode of carrying out business. Given the foregoing, this paper offers some insights into the degree of ecommerce and e-supply strategies within Romanian small and medium-sized businesses. In the given context, this paper focuses on identifying the factors that influenced the success of ecommerce implementation within Romanian small and medium-sized businesses. To achieve the objectives of this research, the data used was collected from April to September 2019 as part of a wider research approach. The article is based on a survey, which was applied to 147 companies that were currently active in Romania, with at least five years’ experience. Likewise, the result findings indicate that some of the technological factors, the environmental factors and especially the organizational factors have a direct effect on the competitiveness of the organization and the implementation of e-commerce at the level of small and medium-sized businesses.

Keywords

• e-commerce
• small and medium-sized enterprise
• competitiveness
• success factors