Business-to-business electronic commerce from first- and second-tier automotive suppliers' perspectives: a preliminary analysis for hypotheses generation

This paper empirically studies Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) adoption a nd implementation by US automobile suppliers by focusing on their incentive systems. Based on our survey data from 103 first-tier and second-tier supp liers and personal interviews, our study found that: (1) there was a gap of understanding about EDI benefits between firms that use EDI and those that don't; (2) the distinction between first-tier and second-tier suppliers wa s becoming ambiguous because of more competitive supplier selection practic es; (3) EDI adoption among second-tier suppliers was low, primarily because of perceptions of low benefits and high costs and asymmetric benefits in f avor of customers and also because of a lack of trading partners with EDI c apability; (4) there were no essential differences between the US firms and Japanese transplants; and (5) proactive companies perceived EDI as having significant competitive advantages, while reactive companies considered EDI as only a necessity. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.