The E-Commerce Divide in Service SMEs Between China And Australia

Abstract

China's economy still keeps the rapid growth for over a decade however; it has to increase its service sector to sustain this growth in the future. Researches on the adoption of e-commerce in China's service small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been lacking and limited so far. This paper discusses that China's service sector might learn e-commerce experience from developed countries, such as Australia, so that it can gain competitive edge at the global level in the long run. Totally, 523 and 353 service SMEs have been selected from China and Australia respectively. This research finding shows that there is no obvious gap in web design quality between China and Australia. However, there is an existing gap in web usability. This research believes that the web usability is the critical reason why China is behind Australia in e-commerce adoption. Finally, this paper makes recommendations for further research.