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Empowerment of SME websites—Development of a web-empowerment scale and preliminary evidence

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Abstract

The emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web has been argued to fundamentally reshape economic conditions and business practices of firms. It is seen as a promoter of rapid internationalisation of companies, particularly small and medium enterprises. In the aftermath of the burst of the electronic-bubble business practitioners and academics look with scrutiny on successful web-strategies, relevant dimensions of online-success and try to identify viable website practices which enable long-term rewards. The literature offers a rather patchy pattern for successful web-strategies and consumer perspectives on what is expected from websites is hardly available. Within this paper, we introduce the dimension “web-empowerment”. This is a multidimensional construct comprising of consumer views on various dimensions of relevant and successful websites. The web-empowerment scale is based on a large sample from Austria, and developed according to scale development procedures. The relevance of this construct and practical issues in the context of a cross-country sample of SME’s is empirically examined. The paper concludes by offering implications for SME practitioners and for research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Manchester Business School (East), The University of Manchester, P.O. Box 88, Manchester, M60 1QD, United Kingdom

    Rudolf R. Sinkovics

  2. Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Austria, Augasse 2-6, A-1090, Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Elfriede Penz

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  1. Rudolf R. Sinkovics
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  2. Elfriede Penz
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Correspondence to Rudolf R. Sinkovics.

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Sinkovics, R.R., Penz, E. Empowerment of SME websites—Development of a web-empowerment scale and preliminary evidence. J Int Entrepr 3, 303–315 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10843-006-7858-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10843-006-7858-8

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