Into the drivers of innovation adoption: What is the impact of the current level of adoption?

The two main objectives of this study are to systematically and formally test for differences in the impact of various determinants of e‐commerce adoption depending on the current level of e‐commerce, and to investigate the possible direct impact of the current level of adoption on the intention to further adopt.

A conceptual framework is developed from the literature. The model is tested using survey data from 98 small and medium‐sized enterprises in The Netherlands.

The results indicate significantly smaller effects of both knowledge and satisfaction for companies at the advanced level of e‐commerce compared with companies at the basic level. The current adoption level has a highly significant positive direct effect on adoption intention. These findings imply that at the higher levels of adoption the classical adoption determinants have less effect and other less explored factors are more important.

This study is one of the first empirical studies to deal with multiple levels of innovation adoption. It is concluded that, when innovations can be adopted at various levels, the determinants of innovation adoption vary between different levels of adoption. This finding deserves further attention from researchers, consultants and policy makers.