Go online or go broke: e-commerce and operational performance-- a study on Philippine internet retail businesses

• Main Authors: Acol, Morgan Christian M., Dy, Royce Y., Sablay, Angelo Miguel R., Tiong, Gilbert Charles K.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2014
• Subjects: Electronic commerce > Philippines; Retail trade > Philippines > Management; Accounting
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/7190
• Institution: De La Salle University

The novelty and fast-paced environment of the internet retail industry and ecommerce in general suggests operational and management differences from a traditional brick-and-mortar store and, thereby, imposes challenges on how established business concepts such as strategy, culture, and learning traditionally affect operations. Coupled with the fact that there are only a few studies with the same concern, this necessitates further studies regarding e-commerce, specifically online retail. This study aims to determine how operational strategy, organizational culture, and learning affects the degree of e-commerce decisions and activities of Philippine internet retail businesses and, in turn, how such chosen and adopted e-commerce activities affect operational performance. Data was gathered through survey of managers and owners of online retailers, then subjected to descriptive and causal research analysis. Descriptive analysis reveals that the current Philippine internet retail industry is mainly composed of businesses with defender strategies (risk-averse), consensual (family-like workplace) and rational cultures (performance-driven workplace), and with high importance given to information acquisition (getting customer feedback). Contrastingly, casual research analysis concludes that a high adoption of e-commerce activities leads to a higher net profit margin, and that such high level of e-commerce is positively influenced by prospector strategies (risk-seeking), developmental cultures (innovation-driven), and high levels of organizational memory (learning from past experiences) and shared interpretation (efficient communication between leaders).