Systematic literature review of e-Commerce implementation studies

Abstract

E-Commerce implementation is a crucial process for organization to make it successful and beneficial. As a consequence, intensive research works in the area of e-Commerce implementation from a diverse range of views and findings have been studied by many researchers. However, the aspect of Business-to-Customer (B2C) e-Commerce implementation has yet been undertaken in an understandable manner in the context of a full life cycle of information systems development. This paper provides a systematic literature review of existing research studies on e-Commerce implementation to discover the extent focus of work based on theme in the implementation phases: pre-implementation, during implementation and post implementation. Sixty five (65) selected primary research studies have been analysed on the basis of implementation phase theme, research approach and research area. The results show that majority papers discussed B2C e-Commerce in the pre-implementation phase (49%) and applied quantitative approach (63%) as the most popular research method. Two other implementation phases namely during implementation phase and post implementation phase has not been sufficiently addressed in the existing literature. Furthermore, existing literature have significantly addressed factors related to e-Commerce implementation but were not mapped to the appropriate implementation phases. These factors list remains on surface without clear direction in which e-Commerce implementation process is crucial for organizations. Thus, through a systematic literature review this study suggests that more research is needed for understanding the complex process of e-Commerce implementation in a more holistic manner. In addition, there is a need for study to screen these factors to a particular and more accurately “map” in the process of e-Commerce implementation