| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
Although there have been some attempts to identify the influence of e-commerce on international business, the multitude of value drivers suggested in the literature raises the question of whether unique value drivers can be identified in the context of e-commerce. The impact of e-commerce drivers on export marketing strategy and export performance has not been empirically tested to date. A goal of this research is to integrate e-commerce components into an existing theoretical framework to better explain export strategy development and its subsequent impact on export performance.
The final driving force of this research relates to potential benefits for exporters that use e-commerce in their overseas operations. The advent of e-commerce has created numerous opportunities to exploit export markets through simultaneous entry into multiple markets. E-commerce, with its unprecedented reach, connectivity, and low-cost information processing power, opens entirely new possibilities for export performance improvement. The research findings obtained from this study could greatly assist Australian government departments, such as the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade) to understand the ‘real’ issues for Australian exporters regarding perceptions, implementation, and benefits to be gained from using e-commerce as a part of their export activities. In addition, this research could have practical implications for organisations in the form of guidelines for improved use of e-commerce in the export business. Benefits to export managers could be the increased efficiency of marketing programs, better understanding of e-commerce opportunities, and more appropriate use of organisational resources.
1.3 Research objective and research questions
The objective of this research is to develop and test a model of export performance influenced by e-commerce. This research measures the relative impact of e-commerce activities on export marketing strategy and the subsequent impact of strategy on export performance. This research extends traditional theory by including e-commerce components as moderators and then measures the influence of these moderators on both export marketing strategy and export performance. Thus, a contingency approach is utilised to examine the extent to which: