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The rapid growth of electronic commerce technologies and practices has created a tremendous need for awareness creation for organisations such as small and medium‐sized enterprises which seem to lack the necessary information about technology, business practices, investment cost and human capital. Often, the professional organisers of awareness activities are also uncertain about best practice in electronic commerce awareness creation. Thus, although a number of initiatives have taken place in Europe, they have failed to produce the expected results. This paper describes how a project funded by the European Commission (WeCAN) defined and evaluated a number of awareness models in electronic commerce in order to support organisations involved in awareness creation such as chambers of commerce, consulting companies and higher educational institutions.

As blogs have become an important information communication medium, selecting blog types that are appropriate and effective for the products they are to promote is now an important issue in corporate advertising. However, the impact of different blog types on consumers and their advertising effectiveness are issues seldom addressed in the existing literature. The purpose of this paper is to view product information that consumers post on blogs as advertisements and compares advertising effectiveness between different blog types to help enterprises properly employ blogs in their marketing campaigns.

An experimental design was adopted, and 12 experimental contexts were designed. A valid sample of over 2,000 responses was collected to study between-group differences in advertising effectiveness.

The analytical results showed between-group difference in advertising effectiveness, which indicated that blog advertising effectiveness varies with different combinations of product constructs and blog types.

The limitations of this study related to the price factor was not incorporated into the experimental model, and shopping channels were not limited. There might be a gap between the prices of the experimental products and the average expense of online shoppers.

The study proposed a framework which can help enterprises to evaluate the type and brand awareness of a product to be promoted and to select the blog type that maximizes advertising effectiveness (perceived risk, ad attitude, brand attitude, and purchase intention) in diffusing product information.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors which impact upon the consumers’ willingness to utilise company Facebook pages and e-word-of mouth by proposing and testing a conceptual framework which is inspired by theories in marketing and information systems fields. The authors believe that only by applying both theories will provide a more complete understanding of the relationship between brand experience and Facebook. The research model attempts to illustrate the factors according to customers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and their impact on brand experience, brand Facebook page loyalty and e-word-of-mouth (E-WOM).

The authors adopted an online survey method for data collection. The subjects the authors used were Facebook users. The data were collected in Taiwan over spring 2011. The authors then used the structural equation model to analyse the data collected.

The findings suggest that users are influenced by the technical characterises of a brand Facebook page, such as ease of use and usefulness, which might be combated by attempting to reduce customer effort when accessing Facebook pages. The authors conclude that customer effort influenced brand experience and consequently loyalty to brand Facebook pages and E-WOM.

The limitations of this study relate to the investigation of consumer perspectives in a specific geographical context and time frame.

The study's contributions are both theoretical and practical, as it offers new insights into brand experience attitudes in an online environment and useful insights to companies willing to market themselves on Facebook.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Issues with ease of use and usefulness of Facebook pages might be addressed by attempting to reduce customer effort when accessing the pages. The authors conclude that customer effort influenced brand experience and consequently loyalty to brand Facebook pages and electronic word-of-mouth.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The paper aims to provide an insight about factors affecting business‐to‐business e‐commerce adoption and implementation in small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), highlighting similarities and differences between Danish and Australian SMEs.

The research is based on a wide literature review, focused on proposing a theoretical model of technological, environmental and organisational factors influencing e‐commerce adoption and implementation. Subsequently, a questionnaire based on the research model has been developed and face‐to‐face interviews were conducted in Danish and Australian companies.

The findings both corroborate previous results about significant factors affecting SMEs' business‐to‐business e‐commerce adoption and implementation and provide new, interesting insights. The study also finds many similarities and differences between Denmark and Australia.

The main limitation relates to the difficulty of generalisation of the findings to a larger population of SMEs. To overcome this, a statistical survey is planned to be conducted in the future.

The results of the empirical research provide indication to SMEs interested to adopt business‐to‐business e‐commerce, large companies interested to conduct e‐commerce transactions with small and medium‐size companies and policy makers.

This paper both contributes to enhancing the understanding of the factors affecting business‐to‐business e‐commerce adoption and implementation in SMEs and provides some interesting perspectives from Denmark and Australia.

Small enterprises are very different in size and organisation, and cannot be considered scaled‐down larger companies. Thus the adoption of ERP by an SME may occur in a highly different environment and cannot directly leverage on corporate experiences. Therefore, finding this subject interesting, this paper aims to analyse the peculiarities of this innovation in SMEs and specifically to cross‐assess the benefits obtained with context/project factors that could influence them.

The research was explicitly focused on an ex post evaluation of a panel of Italian SMEs which completed the introduction of an ERP system. Data about actual achievement, advantages and context/project characteristics were collected through direct interviews with SMEs' managers. A factors‐outcomes model is proposed, discussed and finalised in its most significant variables.

ERP introduction is considered successful to a greater extent than was expected. The most frequently observed benefits are internal procedure simplification, much easier information retrieval, improved performance management, and some production efficiency increases. The factors that seem to mostly affect them are depth of organisational change and type of chosen ERP producer.

Possible associations between each context/project variable and every outcome were identified and their intensity evaluated to suggest which decisive factors to manage.

The key aspects of the research are exclusive focus on the SME segment and the choice of the post‐introduction phase as the moment to assess ERP outcomes. From a review of the literature, no study seems to have adopted a similar perspective.

This paper aims to analyze the determinants of broadband diffusion, taking into account supply‐side factors such as market entry regulation and demand‐side factors such as secondary education attainment.

This paper analyzes 27 countries from the European Union (EU) from 1996 to 2009 using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), which combines quantitative and qualitative methods.

The main findings point out that there is one way for “innovator” adopters and “laggard” adopters in broadband diffusion, while there are few ways for the remaining adopters. Moreover, high entry regulation is associated more with “innovator” adopters, “early adopters” and “early majority adopters” in broadband diffusion, while medium and low entry regulations are associated more with “late majority” and “laggard” adopters in broadband diffusion.

This paper suggests that high secondary school attainment is a necessary factor for broadband innovator countries. By contrast, low income and low secondary school attainment are factors connected with late majority and laggard broadband adopters.

At present, there is no other research about broadband diffusion or technology diffusion that uses this mixed approach. While the results may not be very conclusive, they will serve as an initial springboard for further research into more specific‐variable studies.

There are significant differences in terms of resources and expertise available between small and medium enterprises and large organisations. These differences may be significant for assessing and attaining alignment between IT (information technology) and business strategies. Thus this paper aims primarily to identify whether the differences between small, medium and large enterprises have an impact on the way they perceive strategic alignment.

Based on data collected from 104 participants, five attributes are ranked for each of the following alignment factors: communication, competency/value measurement, governance, partnership, architecture and scope, and skills. This paper reviews and compares their relevance according to organisational size (SMEs and large organisations) and planning integration strategies (independent, sequential and simultaneous).

The results from this survey suggest that, when ranking these factors, there are not significant differences among SME and large organisations. It was found, however, that the ranking of these factors has a positive correlation with the degree of IT/business planning integration applied in the organisation.

This study contributes to an understanding of the complex dynamic of aligning IT with business objectives and the implications for SMEs where few models have been tested. The results suggest that SMEs and large organisations perceived alignment in a similar way, however, there are significant differences in the way SMEs and large organisations implement their planning integrations strategies.

Although current studies in alignment have not explored in much detail the differences between large and small organisations most of the theories around alignment can be applied to small and medium organisations with more confidence. Additionally, the analysis strongly suggests that companies following a simultaneous planning integration can improve the chances to make better use of IT, and thus attain better levels of alignment.

This study contributes towards the study of alignment in SMEs, which is currently not very much explored. It also raises awareness about the importance of developing IT and business strategies together.