| E-commerce made supply chain management (SCM) technically viable and unleashed the practice of SCM. The U.S. apparel industry, due to its own characteristics, has not utilized E-commerce for SCM as widely as it could have. This research was designed as an exploratory study to investigate some of the reasons for this phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to increase understanding of the determinants for E-commerce adoption in SCM within U.S. apparel industry, to test the value of supply chain structure and company strategies in explaining E-commerce adoption, and to contribute to the emerging literature of high technology innovation and new forms of SCM.; An E-commerce adoption model was proposed, which includes four factor groups, organization characteristics, company primary strategic approach and product strategies, supply chain structure and perceived E-commerce characteristics. A questionnaire was developed utilizing prior literature and some existing measures. The survey was conducted by distributing questionnaires at two professional meetings and by mail and email surveys. Regular mail, email and phone reminders were used. Simple regression was used to test the hypothesis. The results confirmed with the organization innovation adoption literature that perceived E-commerce characteristics and organization characteristics influence the E-commerce adoption level although not every factor of these two groups does so. Supply chain structure, particularly SCM integration level, as a new factor was proved to have significant power in explaining E-commerce adoption level among U.S. apparel companies. With several limitations of this study, future research is mainly directed to refining the theoretical framework and survey instrument, and a time series analysis. |
