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Key Indicators for Successful Internet Commerce 149
Empirical Findings
The factors listed in Figure 3, were listed alphabetically and these were
required by the respondents to be ranked from 1 to 10 (1 being the most important
and 10 the least important). On the second page, these factors were again listed
alphabetically, and incorporated in statements. The respondents were required to
mark a preference based on a Likert-type scale (1= strongly disagree to 7=strongly
agree). The data was collated on an Excel spreadsheet and the average for the two
columns were calculated. (See Table 3).
The rating in Figure 3 is the average of the total number of completed
questionnaires. The ranking in the Column 2 was done based on the rating in column
1. Responses to the Likert scale were also ranked; they are presented in Figure 3.
These ratings were entered onto a grid using SPSS for Windows and the Spearman
correlation factors were calculated using the program (see Appendix).
Discussion of Findings
The calculations of the Spearman correlation coefficient has shown that there
was little correlation between the ranking of the critical success factors identified in
the literature (overseas) and the ranking of their practicing South African counter-
Figure 3: Rankings of Key Factors by Practitioners
Theme Rating Ranking “Likert”
rating
Content
analysis
ranking
1 Alignment of Goals 4.5 7.5 4 7
2 Capitalization 5.6 3.5 9 2
3 Feedback 6.3 1 6.5 3
4 Items suitable for
selling
4.3 9.5 1 8
5 Management 5.6 3.5 3 4
6 Marketing 4.5 9.5 6.5 5
7 Parameters 6 2 8 9
8 People 5.2 6 2 6
9 Research and
Development
4.3 7.5 10 1
10 Security 5.3 5 5 10
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