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SME International E-Commerce Activity

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Book cover Frontiers of Broadband, Electronic and Mobile Commerce

Part of the book series: Contributions to Economics ((CE))

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Abstract

This paper examines small and medium enterprise (SME) internationalization and the Internet. The economic importance of SMEs is widely recognized through their 40% to 60% contribution to employment and value-added in most OECD countries (OECD 2002a)1. Further, SMEs account for 20% to 25% of global exports (OECD 2002a). The 1990′s expansion of economic globalization, in concert with the not completely unrelated growth of the World Wide Web (WWW has set the stage for an even greater SME participation in global markets. Globalization, the WWW and SME internationalization became ubiquitous during the 1990s. Trade currently comprises about 20% of world GDP. Depending on the country, 40% to 60% of the population of developed nations is Internet users (International Telecommunication Union 2003). In 2002, more than 60% of Canadian, 55% of US and 45% of European Union (EU) SMEs had adopted Internet business solutions (McClean et al. 2003). Recent research on the international activities of SMEs shows that start-up companies, especially those in high-tech sectors, are internationalizing at increasingly faster rates (Oviatt and McDougall 1997; Schrader et al. 2000; Knight 2000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michael G. DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4M4, Canada

    James H. Tiessen (Associate Professor)

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  1. James H. Tiessen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UWS City Research Centre, University of Western Sydney AEGIS, Level 11, 263 Clarence Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000, Australia

    Russel Cooper

  2. Communication Economics and Electronic Markets Research Centre School of Economics and Finance, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA, 6845, Australia

    Gary Madden

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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Tiessen, J.H. (2004). SME International E-Commerce Activity. In: Cooper, R., Madden, G. (eds) Frontiers of Broadband, Electronic and Mobile Commerce. Contributions to Economics. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2676-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2676-0_4

  • Publisher Name: Physica, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-7908-0087-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-7908-2676-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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