E-commerce critical success factors: East vs. West

The three main purposes of this paper are to (1) identify critical success factors (CSFs) for electronic commerce (EC), (2) investigate the explanatory power of these CSFs on firm performance, and (3) compare differences in evaluating CSFs and explaining impact of CSFs on performance among in Korea, Japan, and USA. Through a literature review and interviews with managers in EC firms, a list of 16 CSFs consisting of 111 items was compiled. Questionnaires were administered to managers of EC companies in Seoul, Korea, Tokyo, Japan, and Texas, USA. Survey results show that CSFs have very significant explanatory power for firm performance in all three countries. While security, privacy, and technical expertise are the most explanatory CSFs in Korea, evaluation of EC operations, technical expertise, and ease of use show most explanatory power in USA.