AN ANALYSIS OF E-COMMERCE (B2B) AWARENESS IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES OF SRI LANKA

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to reveal the present level of e-commerce awareness in manufacturing industries of Sri Lanka. Further to find out what are the potential drawbacks which are preventing the implementation of the e-commerce technologies. This study also also identifies the future investment level of e-commerce technologies in the next few years. It is important to note that the focus of this study is on Business toBusiness (B2B) in manufacturing industries. The sample is selected out of 531 large scale manufacturing companies and finally the sample size of 100 companies were selected randomly. The survey instrument was developed and distributed to the senior executive in their respective companies. The resulting response rate was 40 %. This was the expected rate for the survey. The results indicate the awareness of e-commerce technologies among the Sri Lankan manufacturing company is very high (80%), but investment to develop e-commerce applications is very low. Most popular e-commerce applications are e-mail, internet and the company web site. Email still seems to be the prevalent methods of communication with business partners and their suppliers. The results showed that there was no relationship between the e-commerce awareness level and the type of the business  with p-value (0.391).

Keywords: E-commerce, E-commerce awareness, E-Readiness, B-2-B, Manufacturing industries.

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk