Organizational Influences and Performance Impact of Cross-Border E-Commerce Barriers: The Moderating Role of Home Country Digital Infrastructure and Foreign Market Internet Penetration

In light of this logistics problem, there is a trend nowadays whereby e-commerce firms are constantly seeking to provide products and services to help solve market imperfections and customer pain points. For example, Kohls now takes returns of Amazon shipments, while local drop off partner units take returns from Alibaba’s Taobao platform. Thus, although logistics remains a potential challenge for many e-commerce firms, by employing third-party fulfilment services, one would expect that over time the nature and severity of logistical problems will be gradually reduced.

The relationship between suppliers and buyers should normally be cooperative and not a zero-sum game. However, in situations where the buyer is far more dependent on the supplier than vice versa, the supplier has a potentially higher bargaining power at the expense of the captive buying firm. In this situation, the powerful supplier will typically reap its economic returns at the expense of the captive buyer (Tangpong et al., 2015). Moreover, many supplier–buyer relationships are governed using a variety of mechanisms, which are used to control and influence buyers to behave in certain ways that support the supplier’s objectives. For example, suppliers often use contract-based governance mechanisms, where the parties involved specify the rights and obligations in their transactions in formal written contracts that can vary in terms of their explicitness, hardness, and concreteness (Burkert et al., 2012; Griffith Zhao, 2015). This implies that contract-based governance mechanisms can restrict the autonomy of buyers, including their ability to make their own choices about where to sell their products. A case in point is Coty, a supplier of luxury cosmetic products, that prohibited selected foreign distributors from using online marketplaces, such as Amazon or eBay.

The countries included in the study, together with their respective sample size, are the following: Austria (81), Belgium (61), Bulgaria (17), Czech Republic (47), Germany (70), Denmark (71), Estonia (14), Spain (59), Finland (42), France (74), United Kingdom (56), Greece (61), Croatia (52), Hungary (22), Ireland (93), Italy (48), Lithuania (73), Luxembourg (15), Latvia (26), Netherlands (55), Poland (34), Portugal (70), Romania (38), Sweden (58), and Slovakia (19).

We have also examined the control effect of market type, home country base, and nature of export market on each set of CBEC barriers contained in our conceptual model. The results revealed that market type had a control effect on coping with foreign markets (β = .54, t = 2.58, p = .01), supplier restrictions (β = .45, t = 2.51, p = .01), and technical difficulties (β = .62, t = 3.13, p = .00). Also, home country base had a control effect on financial complexities (β = .61, t = 2.85, p = .00), coping with foreign markets (β = .52, t = 2.84, p = .01), supplier restrictions (β = .67, t = 3.25, p = .00), and technical difficulties (β = .54, t = 2.58, p = .01). Surprisingly, the export market did not exhibit any control effect on any type of CBEC barriers examined.

We have also conducted an additional control analysis of the various types of digital export channels used (i.e., own website, digital platforms, EDI, or multichannel) on each set of CBEC barriers contained in our conceptual model, revealing no statistically significant effects. The only exceptions were the effect of own website on technical difficulties (β = -.20, t = -3.00, p = .00) and digital platforms on technical difficulties (β = -.20, t = -1.81, p = .07).

Notably, Belenzon, Berkovitz, and Rios (2013) identified more than 26,000 business groups in Western Europe. When inspecting our data, firms affiliated with business groups were found to spread across a wide variety of countries. In fact, the countries with the highest number of firms with business group affiliation were Sweden, Denmark, France, and Spain. In contrast, less developed European countries, like Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, had fewer firms affiliated with business groups.