Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important and increasing role in the economy today, and expanding e-commerce in these enterprises can reduce costs and boost their activities. This paper addresses the status of e-commerce implementation in the Iranian industrial SMEs. It begins to examine the concept of e-commerce implementation from various aspects and different approaches. Some indices used to measure e-commerce implementation in different countries and in a number of papers have also been considered. Based on behavioral approaches and with the emphasis on ‘soft’ implementation, a model of e-commerce implementation in the Iranian industrial SMEs has been introduced. The model measures intention to use e-commerce, introductory applications, computer and network communications, informational implementation, transactional implementation, and strategic implementation. A classification of industrial SMEs was made and a selected country-wide sample was surveyed by using a questionnaire, and the data collected was analyzed. Furthermore, the implementation e-commerce profile in the Iranian industrial SMEs was presented, and a comparison among enterprises belonging to various industrial fields, and different geographical regions was drawn. The results show that while the potential grounds for using e-commerce exist in these SMEs, the tendency to use it is less than average, introductory applications are more than average, application of computer and network communications are at about low level, and informational, transactional, and strategic implementation is relatively very low.
)
