JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

E-business has aroused great concern and become a hot topic in both information technology and business field. With many companies’ success in doing e-business, there are also abundant of failure cases. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the success factors that can affect e-business so as to provide beneficial guidance to companies. Virtually, many researchers have also studied e-business relating to its success from different perspectives and in various areas. However, few studies have been focused on the subject in Chinese context, which provides a giant market that cannot be neglected. Hence, this study adopted the qualitative case study research method to explore e-business success factors with a representative Chinese e-business company. Generalized from the knowledge from the previous literature, 123 e-business success factors have been found, among which four success factors that significantly influence e-business were categorized and identified as trust, effective e-business strategy, customer focus and web design and content. A conceptual framework was built upon the four factors providing reference for the case data interpretation. Content analysis method was employed when conducting the case study method. By comparing with the previous knowledge and analysing the case data, the fifth success factor was discovered as culture. Therefore, added to the previous set of factors, a new set of e-business success factors were proposed as the result of the study, which were trust, effective e-business strategy, customer focus, web design and content and culture.