Analysis · Business
When Business Agility Does Not Strengthen the E-Commerce Link
By AWEI · AI-compiled · Published · Analysis prepared · 1 source · doi.org
Being quicker to adapt did not consistently strengthen the link between B2B e-commerce and business performance. In a 2022 study of Malaysian manufacturing SMEs, the customer-related result actually pointed against that prediction. This makes the paper more useful as a challenge to a blanket agility claim than as an endorsement of digital expansion.
Jaya Kumar Shanmugam, Teoh Ai Ping and Ramayah Thuraisamy surveyed owners and managers between December 2019 and February 2020. The results report 193 usable responses from B2B e-commerce adopters, following 1,524 invitations. Non-adopters were excluded, so the analysis compared degrees of adoption among users, rather than users against businesses operating offline.
Managers rated adoption, strategic agility and four performance dimensions: finances, customers, internal processes, and learning and growth. Structural equation modelling examined their relationships. Greater adoption was positively associated with all four dimensions. The separate question was whether those associations became stronger as firms reported greater adaptability and responsiveness.
Only internal processes supported that strengthening hypothesis, narrowly meeting the study’s one-sided significance threshold. For customer performance, the reported interaction was statistically significant but negative: greater agility corresponded to a weaker adoption–performance association in the model. The authors labelled the hypothesis unsupported because they had predicted strengthening. That is different from finding no relationship, although parts of their discussion describe it as insignificant.
This does not show that agility damages customer relationships. The survey measured managers’ perceptions during one period and cannot establish causation. Its 17.6% response rate and selected adopter sample limit generalization. Reporting also warrants caution: the abstract claims 381 participants, conflicting with the results section’s 193 valid responses.
For evaluating B2B digital selling, the useful distinction is between operational coordination and customer performance. A business can examine both separately rather than assume they move together. This study raises that measurement question; it does not establish an ideal level of agility or identify the best sales channel.
Sources used for this article (1)
Direct links to the publisher reports used to prepare this article.
- Source 1
- Business-to-Business E-Commerce Adoption Amongst the Malaysian Manufacturing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Strategic Agility as Moderator Jaya Kumar Shanmugam, Teoh Ai Ping, Ramayah Thuraisamy
