E-BUSINESS IN SRI LANKA: CUSTOMER PERCEPTION ON VALUE CREATION IN TRADE

Abstract

E-business has emerged as a pioneering paradigm of present-day trade, with intense advancement of information and communication technology (ICT). This growth in ICT has used to deliver main activities in trade namely buying or selling, promotion, customer communication, and market studies, using various methods of ICT, which involves simple to very complicated processes. However, all these processes in trading activities has to design to achieve one goal in order to be effective, that is to achieve customer satisfaction (preferably customer loyalty), by creating value to customer. Value creation is producing product or service that meets customer demands, which involves innovation and new product or service or process development intends to create prominence to customers and ultimately stakeholders. These value propositions delivered through internal operations in ebusiness, namely novelty, lock-in, complementarities, and efficiency, have limitedly researched in Sri Lanka. This research statistically validates a model of e-business value creation, based on data drawn with interviews and structured questionnaire referring to these four tactics. The study, with explanatory purpose and survey strategy was carried out in 2018 covering 183 e-business customers in trade sectors in Sri Lanka to achieve three research objectives: identify sources of value creation, examine customer perception on created value, and identify association between value creation and value drivers. Mix research method was employed for data collection and analysis to ensure achievement of these research objectives. The results demonstrates that characteristics of the core product is more appropriate than complementarities in e-business to create value in trade sector, as customers generally concern on what to purchase in number of viewpoints, and then only they look at combined value of purchasing bundle of goods together against total value of having each of the goods separately. The research also acknowledges interconnectivity of these four perspectives in strengthening value creation in e-business.