The concept of e-markets offers buyers and sellers many opportunities including reduced costs and seamless communication in their supply chain. It was envisioned that buying organisations would use e-marketplaces to access a wide range of suppliers, compare their products and prices, and switch between suppliers upon finding a lower price. This promise lead many to believe that e-marketplaces would revolutionise the way in which organisations managed their supply chains, many predicting that most purchases would be conducted through e-marketplaces by 2003. This however did not materialise as e-market adoption was slow. As a result many e-markets didn’t reach the critical mass that was necessary for them to survive.  A few e-marketplaces survived but the folding of many made it necessary for researchers to find out the factors that influence organisations in adopting e-markets. There has been a lot of research conducted on the factors affecting adoption of e-markets in other parts of the world but there is little information that could be found on the factors that influence e-market adoption in South Africa. This research will seek to infer whether the factors that affect B2B e-market in other parts of the world are applicable in the South African context. In particular, the first objective is to identify the reasons why South African retailers are not adopting e-markets and discover whether organisational size and retail type are factors in the adoption of e-marketplaces. The second objective is to identify whether current adopters of e-markets perceive e-markets as useful and easy to use and infer whether organisational size and retail type affect these perceptions.

Keywords: B2B e-marketplaces, South Africa, Adoption