Understanding e-business adoption across industries in European countries

Purpose - The paper seeks to investigate the factors that affect the adoption of e-business by firms belonging to European Union (EU) countries, by comparing the effect across two different industries: telecommunications (telco) and tourism. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected from 2,459 firms belonging to EU27 countries across two industries. The data were analyzed by employing factorial analysis and relevant hypotheses were derived and tested by logistic regression analysis. Findings - The results suggest that the perceived benefits and obstacles of e-business, technology readiness, competitive pressure, and trading partner collaboration are the drivers that are important for both industries. Through the comparison of the industries, statistically significant differences between the telco and the tourism industries, i.e. the relative importance of all drivers for e-business adoption differs between the industries, were found. The only exception is competitive pressure. Research limitations/implications - The cross-sectional nature of this paper does not allow knowing how this relationship will change overtime. Practical implications - The findings offer valuable insight to managerial and policy makers; they should promote information and communication technology infrastructure, information technology training programmes to employees, and trading partner collaboration with business partners in each industry mainly in the tourism industry. Originality/value - To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is one of the first that examines adoption of e-business with a multi-industries comparison of EU27 countries using a research model that combines the Tornatzky and Fleischer model and the Iacovou et al. model.