An Examination of the IT Satisfaction of Small-Business Users

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Prashant Palvia, Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor and Director of the McDowell Research Center for Global IT Management (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: Although there are many articles in the NIS literature which address small-business computing, in effect the organizations represented in these studies are, in many ways, similar to medium- and large-sized organizations. In this article, we focus on businesses that are truly small: they have very few employees and there is no formal NIS department. In this environment, the small business owner/manager is the principal user and has to perform most of the IT functions. For such an environment, an IT satisfaction construct and measurement instrument are presented. A survey, using the measurement instrument, of a representative sample of small businesses was conducted to identify user satisfaction patterns. Key areas of IT dissatisfactions are: training and education (the most important), software maintenance, documentation, and vendor support. These deficiency areas can be appropriately addressed by software vendors and consultants. Finally, a contingency analysis of IT satisfaction based on business-related factors and owner characteristics was performed. A general observation was that the owner attributes have a greater impact on IT satisfaction than any of the business factors. The ones that stood out the most were the gender and the age of the owner.

Additional Information

Publication
Information & Management. Vol. 35, 1999, pp. 127-137
Language: English
Date: 1999
Keywords
Small-business computing, IT satisfaction, User satisfaction, Instrument, Very small businesses, Satisfaction patterns, Business variables, Owner variables

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