Competitive factors of the agro-food E-commerce

In the new economy small and medium enterprises face new challenges in their business-to-consumers transactions, such as the use of new information and communication technologies. Electronic commerce may represent a competitive strategy to make enterprises of the agro-food sector more visible to consumers, if usability is adequately taken into account. The main barrier to the development of successful e-commerce business is represented by websites not meeting basic accessibility and usability features. To tackle this issue, heuristic evaluation and the gap analysis approach was adopted. The parameters taken into account stemmed from international Web recommendations and from previous surveys in the literature. Web site usability issues have been measured by a panel of consumers assessing a selected Web site each. Potential e-consumers simulated an online purchase, thereby allowing them to acquire insights on the importance and satisfaction on each of the usability issues taken into consideration. The success factors for e-commerce mainly involve efficiency of navigation (useful navigation tools or sequence of navigation), accuracy in content and supplied information. Consumers are more conduced to purchase by easy structure of Web sites than design and style. Additional information underlining the connection of producers to their territory enhances end-consumers' feel in supply chain identification. The adoption of e-commerce, as an innovative communication challenge in rural development and in regional identity is a crucial issue of dynamic food chains.