The effect of e-commerce in international trade: An application on firms in İzmir

Foreign trade activities are vital for countries and companies in a globalizing world. Companies must adapt to the development of the internet and technology day by day. It is an inevitavle fact for the companies that want to be successful in foreign trade activities. This study was carried out to investigate the domestic corporate internet usage levels in foreign trade activities and to examine the characteristics of companies such as the sector in which they operate, how many different countries they trade with, groups of countries they import and export the most, and the legal status of companies. In this study, 167 companies in İzmir and foreign trade activities were surveyed. SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) for Windows 24 program was used to evaluate the data obtained from the research. Percentage and frequency analyzes were used to determine the characteristic of the companies. In domestic corporate internet usage and foreign trade activities, the average and standard deviations of the incoming participations were used in determining the levels of internet usage. T-test, One Way Anova and Post-Hoc analysis from Tukey and Games Howell were used for testing the hypotheses. As a result of the study, it is observed that domestic corporate internet usage of companies and internet usage levels in foreign trade activities are at a high level. In spite of this, it was determined that in terms of having an adequate place in social media, of finding customers who search on the internet and find them, and of taking online foreign trade orders they can not use the internet sufficiently. It has been observed that there is a difference in internet usage according to the characteristics of companies. It has been determined that firms, especially the ones which have been operating for 1-5 years and engaged in foreign trade with fewer countries have lower internet use and utilization levels. Key Words: Foreign Trade, Internet, E-Commerce