© Copyright Janene Carey, 2005.
This report provides an overview of an exploratory research study into consultant-developed small business web sites. The research was conducted by Janene Carey, a Master of Economics candidate at the University of New England in Armidale, and supervised by Professor Ray Cooksey and Mr. Joachim Gerk.
New ways of doing business enabled by Internet technologies present significant opportunities and threats to a crucial sector of the Australian economy: small business. Even though the proportion of small businesses that are connected to the Internet is high, research has shown that they are making only limited use of electronic commerce and have little strategic sense of its potential business impact. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the web site formation processes of small businesses, particularly looking at the part played by web development consultants in assisting them with the process of developing a web strategy.
Transcripts of in-depth interviews with business owners and web developers, web site content analysis, and review of available documentation were used to construct detailed case studies describing, analysing and interpreting the influences shaping the content and functionality of each web site. Cross-case findings and cross-case themes were presented and discussed with reference to other relevant research and theory.
The circumscription of web strategy theme that emerged from this research suggests the possibility that although small businesses are looking for assistance in forming an appropriate web strategy, web developers are not canvassing all the options for content and functionality. The relationship negotiation theme provides four complex and diverse examples of expectations about roles and responsibilities being negotiated in order for the business owner and the web developer to reach agreement about how they would work together. A key implication for practice is that small business owners looking for external support of a strategic as well as a technical kind from their web developer should be careful to select someone who can work collaboratively with them to comprehensively explore how the web strategy could both impact on and be aligned with business strategies.
In more ways than one, the Internet may mean the end of business as usual for small business. Electronic commerce, broadly defined to embrace all business activities conducted using electronic data transmission via the Internet (Schneider & Perry, 2000), offers small businesses, particularly those in rural and regional areas, unprecedented opportunities to expand into global markets, deal directly with suppliers and customers, streamline business processes and develop new products and services (Gallagher, 1999; Crawford, 1998). However, e-commerce poses threats as well as opportunities. Foremost among these threats is that small, local, bricks-and-mortar businesses face the risk of larger, online competitors making skilful use of e-commerce to reach into their markets, whether from another country or simply from a bigger town or regional centre nearby (Coulthard, 2001; Stansfield & Grant, 2003).
Research into uptake of the Internet by small businesses in Australia has established that although 86% are online and 45% have their own web site (Sensis, 2004), most are making only limited use of the new electronic capabilities and have little strategic sense of the relevance of e-commerce to their business (Poon, 1999; NOIE, 2000). The majority of small business web sites are brochureware, static promotional sites focused on advertising the business and relaying product or service information in a manner which is locked into a one-way mass communication paradigm (Cragg, 1998; Adam & Deans, 2000; Yellow Pages, 2003). This has been described as a very simple or even primitive Internet strategy (Angehrn, 1997; Hoque, 2000) as it fails to take advantage of the Internet’s distinctive features as a medium for communicating that can be richly informative, dynamic, and interactive.
Factors which act to constrain the e-commerce initiatives of small business have been identified in the literature (Chambers, 1999; NOIE, 2001; Stansfield & Grant, 2003; Australian Industry Group, 2002). They include lack of e-commerce understanding, experience and skills on the part of small business owners and their staff, other priorities competing for available finances and time, and difficulty in finding e-commerce information and assistance. These factors can be understood more generally in terms of theories related to small business resource poverty (Welsh & White, 1981) and knowledge barrier impediments to dissemination of technological innovation (Attewell, 1992).
Bridging intermediaries such as consultants can assist small business to overcome the constraints of resource poverty and knowledge barriers in taking advantage of new information technology (Attewell, 1992; Bessant & Rush, 1995; Thong, 2001). Little is known about how this might apply in the specific case of small businesses seeking external support for the deployment of Internet technologies. The present study sought to address this research gap, by exploring the formation processes of small business web sites developed by consultants.
The broad research issues that structured and focused the investigation were:
Interpretive case study methodology was used to address the research issues. The qualitative nature of the study was appropriate given the underdeveloped state of extant theory and the complexity of processes and actions in the area of small business strategy formation and interactions between business owners and external consultants. The interpretive theoretical perspective allowed the study to be grounded in an understanding of the beliefs, intentions and experiences of the participants. The use of case studies as a methodological tool preserves the holistic, contextual and meaningful character of the processes being investigated.
Each case consisted of a small business from northern NSW, its web site, and the web development consultant engaged to develop the web site. The intention was to investigate typical examples without making any claim that they were representative of a population. Both the business owner and the web developer had to be willing to participate in the research, as I wanted to gather details about the process and interactions from both sides. Cases were chosen across two different business sectors: three were niche manufacturers making very distinctive, high quality products for national and international markets. The fourth was a travel agency that was moving to online ticket-selling, with full search, book and pay facilities on its web site.
In considering the type of usage that small businesses have made of the Internet, it is helpful to have a framework that categorises the range of possibilities. For doing the web site content analysis, I employed the ICDT model (Angehrn, 1997) as a framework for analysing the content and functionality offered by the web sites. The acronym ICDT denotes four virtual spaces – Information, Communication, Distribution and Transaction – which are extensions of the traditional market space where economic agents engage in business activities.
Good qualitative analysis and interpretation depends upon coherent answers to major descriptive questions (Patton, 1990). The descriptive component of each case study included an introduction to the business, a map of the web site, and a low-inference narrative account of the web site formation process. Within-case analytic summaries were created by distilling key aspects of the descriptive narratives to diagrammatic form. Following this was an interpretive discussion section, based upon a more critical reading of the case materials. For each case I focused on two main thematic areas, one relating to web strategy formation, and the other to the business owner / web developer relationship.
For three of the four cases, I found that the initial level of strategic e-commerce understanding on the part of the business owners was low, and they were reliant upon the web developer to explain how to deploy a web site to best advantage within their business. Development of the web sites had to compete with other pressing business priorities for attention and generally did not fare well, perhaps because their potential strategic impact was poorly understood. However, both of these difficulties might have been surmounted if there had been excellent communication between the web developers and the business owners in relation to canvassing the full range of possibilities for the business web sites. Unfortunately, communication about web strategy options did not get beyond using the web site for marketing purposes.
The inadequate consideration of web site content and functionality options demonstrated across the cases, and literature indicating that conceptions of how to make use of the Internet are being adversely affected by mass-media mindsets, led me to suggest that web developers and their small business clients would benefit from using some kind of analytic framework (even something as simple as ICDT) to direct attention to the different ways that Internet technologies could both impact on and be aligned with business strategies.
In terms of the relationships between business owners and web developers, I found that interaction styles ran the full gamut: from very directive (one business owner and one web developer, fortunately not within the same case) through to very collaborative in their approach. The majority of business owners and web developers perceived an element of teaching and guiding in the role of the web developer, in addition to the more commonly recognised creating and implementing aspects of the role.
Two of the four business owners and one of the web developers initially regarded the roles and responsibilities of each party in a manner which has been described as the ‘Informant/Recipient’ misconception of the client/consultant relationship (Tilles, 1961). The client facilitates a free flow of information to the consultant but otherwise has no involvement in shaping the end-product. In the situation pertaining to my study, the business owner would hand over a set of business documents and receive in return a completed web site. However, the literature on client/consultant relationships points to better outcomes from the adoption of a collaborative style of interaction with a higher level of client involvement (Tilles, 1961; Turner, 1982; Gable, 1991; Bessant & Rush, 1995; Eklund & Lowe, 2002).
The negotiation and clarification of roles and responsibilities was an important aspect of the business owner / web developer relationships described in my study. I found examples of:
This study set out to explore what happens when a small business turns to a web developer for assistance with the design and implementation of a web site. Through its focus on illuminating actual processes and the roles played by the respective parties, hopefully it lays a foundation for helping small business to move "beyond brochureware", so that they may take better advantage of the range of e-commerce opportunities available to them. A complete account of the research, including a full exposition of the findings and their implications, is available on request from janene@hutchinsonsoftware.com
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