A comprehensive review on e-commerce research

• Main Authors: Khoo, Vivian, Ahmi, Aidi, Saad, Ram Al Jaffri
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IP Publishing LLC 2018
• Subjects: HF Commerce
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/27518/1/khoo2018.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/27518/; http://doi.org/10.1063/1.5055471
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Based on the review on the available literature sources, this paper comprehensively discusses the identified studies which have been done in the context of e-commerce adoption. Seventy-three (73) papers have been extracted from Elsevier's Scopus database. Those papers were analyzed based on the distribution of publication, the scope demography, the research approach and research method and the adapted theory or conceptual framework. The result of the study found that publications in e-commerce research rose to peak year in 2015. Most of the e-commerce adoption studies were carried out in Southeast Asia (26%) and determining factors of e-commerce adoption was the most popular theme across region. Despite of its popularity, the findings were inconclusive in terms of specific determinants that significantly contributed towards e-commerce adoption. However, it is found that variables from the organizational context and external environment context significantly contributed towards e-commerce adoption. Most of the studies preferred quantitative approach (71.2%), especially in employing questionnaire methods. The result of the theory analysis reveals that the most frequently used conceptual framework was TOE framework, while many studies (24.7%) did not take into account of specific conceptual framework. Only a few researchers (11%) had used self-developed conceptual framework rather than existing framework. In term of scope, majority of the studies focused on the factors that encourage e-commerce adoption. Such limited scope of studies efforts could only provide a partial understanding of the diffusion process. Future research shall go further to investigate the post-adoption stages of e-commerce. The limitation of single database and keywords might fail to give more extensive retrieved number of articles in the study.