COVID-19 Impact on E-commerce Usage: An Empirical Evidence from Sri Lankan SME Sector (With special reference to Northern Province)
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Date
2021
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
The adoption of e-commerce in the small and medium sector has become one of the main business
improvement areas in the Small and Medium Enterprises that seems unavoidable in competing and
even surviving in a highly competitive industry before and during COVID-19. This study focus on
the impact of e-commerce usage in small and medium enterprises under the COVID-19 outbreak. It is
found that many firms are having a difficult situation with business operation and attempted to use e-
commerce to upgrade their operation and competitive capabilities for survival in the industry. To
review this problem in the Sri Lankan Small and Medium Enterprise sector, Technological,
Organizational and Environmental model was modified and used as a conceptual framework to
review the problem in the Sri Lankan small and medium enterprises. This study focused on the
Northern Province of Sri Lanka, consisting of five districts: Jaffna, Killinochchi, Vavuniya, Mannar
and Mullaitivu. This research was conducted based on quantitative survey method. The structured
questionnaire was distributed among 120 samples of small and medium enterprises, which was
selected using a simple random technique. The data collected through this survey was analyzed using
SPSS and PLS-SEM (SmartPLS) version 3 to examine the relationship between variables and test the
hypothesis. The findings of the study reveal that perceived benefits, e-commerce knowledge, external
pressure and supply chain integration have a significant positive impact. In the other hand, IT
infrastructure has an insignificant effect on e-commerce usage. In addition, the benefits obtained from
this study can be used to empower e-commerce usage in the small and medium enterprise, including
manufacturing industry, service industry and trade industry. Also, it will enhance the quality of
providing goods and services. The origin of this research is combining effect of Technological,
Organizational and Environmental and Diffusion of Innovation theory on e-commerce usage for the
Small and Medium Enterprises to contribute to the literature.
Keywords: COVID-19; E-commerce; Small and Medium enterprises; Organizational; Technological;
Environmental
Description
Keywords
Business Management, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Health Science, Covid-19