Extent of E-procurement Use in SMEs: A Descriptive Study

Although e-procurement is a complex practice, a number of existing studies, however, simplified the representation of the state of e-procurement in an organization to a binary measure. Although this is helpful to understand adoption decisions, it does not completely capture the reach and richness of the use of information technology (IT) innovations. Hence, this study explores the extent of e-procurement use in New Zealand, focusing specifically on the range of e-procurement functionalities used in the manufacturing SMEs. The e-procurement functionalities are seen from the information and transaction perspectives. A cross-sectional survey is used as a methodology for data collection. The SPSS software is used to analyse the data gathered from the 151 senior managers. Our results demonstrate that all of the functionalities, especially those that rely on commonly available technologies, are in use. Nonetheless, complex e-procurement technologies, such as e-auctions, are not common.