Characteristics of Adoption and Use of B2B Enabling Technologies in Australian Companies

This paper uses data from Australian companies to compare and examine characteristics of adoption and use of emerging technologies such as the Internet. In order to achieve this the use of emerging technologies is compared to the use of established technologies (such as EDI) on the basis of company size, industry and ANZSIC code (an industry classification code similar to the International Standard Industrial Classification ISIC). The functions of current and planned websites are also compared on the basis of these demographic variables, and a causal model is used to examine the implications of implementation of Internet technologies. The results indicate that many of the same characteristics identified for the adoption and use of established technologies will not hold true for emerging technologies such as the Internet. It is, however, also noted that some critical characteristics for improving performance through the use of these enabling technologies appear unchanged, irrespective of their improved ease of implementation and use.