SMEs and electronic commerce: The case of Istanbul

Electronic commerce has been increasingly popular and become a must tool for the enterprises. Since the internet started to be used commonly by all segments of the society, electronic commerce had gained a crucial significance as a practical way for people to meet their needs. The main purpose of this study is to examine the perception of and the expectations from electronic commerce by SMEs, and to evaluate the effect of the obstacles to e-commerce on the innovation processes and performance. Within this study, impact of the innovation processes and innovation data sources in the field of electronic commerce on the performance of the enterprises is analysed. A survey comprising of 50 questions had been conducted by the participation of middle and higher level managers of the SMEs in Istanbul. In total, 277 surveys had been examined. Reliability and validity of these surveys were checked via SPSS-17, and evaluated by using the methods of factor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis. As a result, it has been confirmed that factors of innovation processes and innovation data sources have a meaningful relation with the performance of companies. Therefore, the importance and necessity of investing in innovation processes and data sources for increasing the company performance is verified by this study.