Critical success factors for a competitive advantage in electronic commerce: empirical study in paraguayan companies

Electronic commerce has been one of the most active fields of investigation in Information Technology in the last few years. It would be interesting to find out which critical factors keep electronic commerce from achieving success and which factors would be regarded as a sustainable competitive advantage for companies. In this investigation we have developed a model for the achievement of success in electronic commerce based on what is proposed by DeLone and McLean regarding the current model to achieve success in Information Systems, tested by the AMOS (Analysis of Moment Structures), through a sample of 55 Paraguayan companies. As for the bibliography used, we have performed a meta-analysis study with the purpose of identifying the most relevant journals, with their respective current authors and the indicators that represent the importance to the project. The results have yielded valuable conclusions to the Paraguayan reality as only two of the 10 indentified critical factors for success were detected: “Experts in information technology (IT) and infrastructure” and “Interoperability of the system”. These are regarded as factors which have been converted into a timely competitive advantage but not into a sustainable competitive advantage through time, due to reasons such as a lack of experts in information technology (IT), particularly regarding the knowledge of electronic commerce and the sluggishness of development of electronic commerce which carries out online activities.

近年来，电子商务已成为信息技术领域最活跃的研究方向之一。探究阻碍电子商务取得成功的关键因素，以及哪些因素能够为企业构筑可持续竞争优势，具有重要的研究价值。本研究基于DeLone与McLean提出的经典信息系统成功模型，构建了电子商务成功影响模型，并通过55家巴拉圭企业的样本数据，采用AMOS（Analysis of Moment Structures，矩结构分析）对模型进行了验证。在参考文献梳理环节，本研究开展了元分析研究，旨在筛选出与本项目高度相关的核心期刊、当前主流作者以及能够体现研究重要性的指标体系。研究结果针对巴拉圭的实际情况得出了极具实践价值的结论：在原本识别出的10项成功关键因素中，仅两项得到了验证，即"信息技术（Information Technology，IT）专家与基础设施"以及"系统互操作性"。上述两项因素仅能为企业带来短期竞争优势，却无法转化为长期可持续竞争优势，究其原因包括信息技术（IT）人才匮乏（尤其是缺乏电子商务专业知识的人才）以及开展在线业务的电子商务发展步伐迟缓。