Manufacturing firms’ E-commerce adoption and performance: evidence from a large survey in Jiaxing, China

This paper investigates the deterministic factors for e-commerce adoption and the factors that affect e-commerce performance after adoption in manufacturing firms. By using a large survey dataset on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Jiaxing city, we find that (1) e-commerce adoption by manufacturing firms is negatively correlated with the firm age and positively correlated with firm size, their experience of supplying for Internet firms, and their own online shopping experience; (2) the e-commerce performance of the manufacturing firms is positively correlated with firms’ experience with e-commerce and firms’ size in e-commerce business; (3) all the above findings are similar for retailing firms, but manufacturing firms’ online performance relies more on their online firm size, and the effect of location choice is more salient for retailing firms. These findings complement the existing literature on e-commerce adoption and have important implications for the development of e-commerce adoption in developing countries.