Değişen rekabet koşulları içerisinde işletmeler ayakta kalabilmek için gelişen teknoloji ve yenilikleri takip etmek zorundadırlar. İşletme faaliyetlerinin elektronik ortamda gerçekleştirilmesi olarak tanımlanabilen elektronik ticaret, işletmelere özellikle de KOBİ’lere yeni pazarlara ulaşma ve rakipleri ile rekabet edebilme gibi konularda fırsatlar sunmaktadır. Bu araştırmanın amacı, OSTİM’de faaliyet gösteren KOBİ’lerin elektronik ticaret kullanma durumlarını ortaya koymaktır. Araştırmada anket yöntemiyle veri toplanmıştır. Araştırmaya katılan 269 adet işletmenin %24,9’unun elektronik ticaret yaptığı, %75,1’inin ise elektronik ticaret yapmadığı belirlenmiştir. E-ticaret yapmayan işletmelerin e-ticaret yapmama nedenleri arasında ilk üç sırada; bulundukları sektörde yaygın olarak kullanılan kabul görmüş bir ticaret şekli olmaması, teknik altyapı eksikliği ve güvenlik problemi gelmektedir. İşletmelerin elektronik ticaret yapma nedenleri arasında ise, ilk üç sırada, yeni pazarlara ulaşmak, işletmenin satışlarını artırmak ve işletmenin rekabet gücünü artırmak gelmektedir. KOBİ’ler elektronik ticaret yaparken karşılaştıkları en önemli sorunlar olarak; güvenlik nedeniyle elektronik ticaretin müşterileri tarafından tercih edilmemesini, işletmenin teknik altyapı eksikliği nedeniyle elektronik ticaretten yeterli düzeyde faydalanamamasını, elektronik ticaret konusunda eğitim verilmemesini ve işletme müşterilerinin görsel olarak görmedikleri bir ürünü satın almak istememelerini belirtmişlerdir. Bu verilere göre, e-ticaret yapan KOBİ sayısının yeterli düzeyde olmadığı, e-ticaret yapan işletmelerin bazı sorunlar yaşadıkları, e-ticaret yapmayanların da konuyla ilgili yeterli bilgi sahibi olmadıkları söylenebilir. Bu noktada, KOBİ’lere konuyla ilgili bilgilendirici eğitimlerin verilmesi, başarılı örneklerin gösterilmesi yoluyla KOBİ’lerin elektronik ticaret kullanımı konusunda teşvik edilmeleri ve yapılacak düzenlemeler ve verilecek eğitimlerle KOBİ’lerde elektronik ticaret kullanımının yaygınlaştırılması gerektiği söylenebilir.

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) play very important role not only in economical life but also in social life by their adaptive structures that can occur in changes and innovations. SMEs contribute to the economy by both producing the final product and producing goods for large enterprises. During the changing competitive conditions, enterprises have to follow the developing technologies and improvements in order to remain standing. Electronic commerce, which can be defined as the implementation of enterprise activities in electronically medium, give opportunities to the enterprises, especially to the SMEs, in finding new markets and competing with the others. In competitive conditions, the importance given to the use of electronic commerce is on the rise. The use of electronic commerce is inevitable also for SMEs willing to obtain a competitive advantage in the international markets and to follow technological developments. In this context, status of electronic commerce usage and perspectives of SMEs operating in OSTİM which is one of the largest industrial site of our country is investigated. Questionnaire is used to gather the necessary data for this research. In this research, SMEs doing/not doing e-commerce status, reasons not to do e-commerce, thinking situations about doing e-commerce of enterprises not using e-commerce; period of doing e-commerce, e-commerce application forms, activities within e-commerce, reasons to do e-commerce and problems faced doing e-commerce of enterprises using e-commerce is investigated. 1400 of the enterprises operating in OSTİM which have web sites are adopted as the population of the research. According to this population; the sample size is calculated as 300 enterprises with 95% confidence limit and 5% margin of error. 300 questionnaires are applied to randomly selected enterprises. Data was collected in two ways such as distributing and recollecting the survey forms by hand to businesses and via email. A total number of 269 surveys forms, 225 of which was distributed by hand and 49 of which were sent via electronic mail, were taken back and evaluated in the context of this research. Rate of reaching target sample size is 89.7%. It is determined that 24.9% of the 269 surveyed enterprises use electronic commerce and 75.1% of them do not use electronic commerce. First three reasons of the enterprises which do not use e-commerce are; e-commerce is not a widely used form of trade in their sector, lack of technical infrastructure and security problems. 45% of enterprises which do not use e-commerce are willing to take part in e-commerce applications within the up coming years. However, 40% of them constantly stay away from the e-commerce business. So the rate of e-commerce willingness in a sort period time is 14.9%. In accordance of these data the amount of e-commerce willingness among the companies are rather low whereas the rate of e-commerce willingness is much higher than the resistance to e-commerce. In other words companies do not have any tendency to take part in e-commerce applications in short term. In addition to this more than one third of them do not want to deal with this business branch, either. In brief this situation is a real deficiency among the dense competitiveness of SMEs, since e-commerce is a real opportunity to spread the market world wide. Besides, those companies are not aware of the advantages of e-commerce applications and running a world wide business. The ones which apply the ecommerce business are claimed to run the applications in 53.7% from enterprise to enterprise, 41.8% from enterprise to customer. The rate of e-commerce business via Private Sector to Public Sector or vice a versa is 4.5%. This gathered data state that the e-commerce applications are becoming dense among enterprises to enterprises rather than the other options. First three reasons of the enterprises which use e-commerce are; to reach new markets, to increase sales of the enterprise and to increase the competitive power of enterprise. In the context of electronic commerce activities, enterprises mostly do presentation of products, taking orders and making sales. SMEs indicated the most important problems they faced during electronic commerce as electronic commerce is not preferred by the customers due to security reasons, insufficient benefit of the enterprise from electronic commerce due to lack of technical infrastructure, lack of training on electronic commerce and unwillingness of business customers to buy a product that they do not see visually. In accordance of the gathered data from the survey can be said that SMEs are partially aware of the e-commerce applications and the SMEs are not enough willing to use e-commerce applications. The reasons why enterprises do not use e-commerce are alikely parallel to the enterprises which come across with the conflicts while using the e-commerce applications. While comparing and contrasting the gathered data, the disseminating obstacles towards the development of e-commerce are as follows: electronic commerce is not preferred by the customers due to security reasons, it is not commonly used in the sector, lack of technical infrastructure and training needs on the issue. Security problems due to operations made via internet have been started to be solved due to the recent developments in technology. At this point, important thing is that the SMEs should be informed and their trust levels should be enhanced. The issue of training needs on e-commerce which were also stated by the respondents of the study shows that key point is “training”. At this point, the use of electronic commerce should be expanded at SMEs by providing relevant informative training about the subject to the SMEs, encouraging SMEs by showing successful examples about the use of electronic commerce and with the arrangements and trainings. However, taking into consideration the problems of ecommerce, it can be seen that it has also technical and legal size. In addition, enterprise owners and managers should increase the level of enterprises’ technology usage. As a result, only by doing one’s part by all parties consisting of state, institutions and organizations offering services to SMEs and enterprise owners, the use of electronic commerce in SMEs can be spread widely and it can be provided for SMEs to take part in the international market.