Title : E-commerce adoption in B2B specialty chemical industry
Abstract:
E-commerce as a pathbreaking disruptive innovation of recent times, offers general businesses, a high level of customer satisfaction delivering noticeable cost benefits. Since the inception of E-commerce concept, we have been experiencing its exponential momentum in every corner of business. In fact, the significance of this concept is further recognized these days while experiencing the disruptions in global trade environment under the lock down scenarios in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The Specialty Chemical Industry deals with chemicals that have an impact on some industrial chemical processes and final products, including those for our most fundamental requirements such as food and pharmaceuticals; it would be practically impossible to survive and thrive without this industry's products and services. It has been observed that, despite many growth stories, this industry is trailing to follow latest technological suit versus peers. Challenges like fading innovation, evolving regulatory landscape, sustainability, rapid digitalisation under Industry 4.0 and dynamic geo-political developments instigating trade barriers disrupting feedstock supplies are affecting this industry significantly. Such challenging situations do instigate a need for conducting business research around connecting topics, one of them being looking at a business model of E-commerce, to address and possibly mitigate some of such challenges.
This exploratory study has been intended to run across South Asia and Southeast Asia cross-sectionally in the B2B Specialty Chemical Industry, and it is currently in the stage of quantitative assessment of the derived conceptual framework. This study was designed to run across South Asia and Southeast Asia. At this stage, I would like to share the background and significance of my research, as well as the literature review that was involved in arriving at my conceptual framework and leading to related research questions and hypotheses. In addition, I would like to provide some additional information regarding the research methodology that was adopted for the study. I will briefly describe the sampling strategy used for the pre-testing of the survey instrument and the pilot study, as well as the preliminary findings of the study. Finally, I'd like to outline the steps I intend to take to conduct my intended large-scale study, which includes gathering the necessary data and analysing it with a predetermined statistical tool to verify my research hypotheses derive outcomes, identify limitations, and define scope for further research.
Audience Takeaway:
- Insight into the possible enablers/barriers to E-commerce adoption in the specialty chemical sector will be shared with the audience.
- A portion of the audience may be influenced to become a catalyst for the spread of the idea within their own professional and business network (WOM).
- As such, this empirical research study is a formal attempt to explain the process driving E-com adoption in the B2B specialty chemical industry, and it is anticipated that this work may contribute to the body of knowledge in both, the academic and practical sectors.
- The findings of this research in future may be useful in the education and training programs in relevant schools.
