e-Procurement Use and Adoption Barriers: Evidence from the Greek Foodservice Sector Marianna Sigala a a Business School, University of the Aegean, Greece School of Economics, Free University of Bolzano, Italy m.sigala@aegean.gr Abstract Despite e-procurement's benefits, most firms are slow in adopting it. As prior studies on e- procurement have primarily focused on investigating its benefits or adoption mainly in manufacturing, research examining the factors influencing the use and adoption of e- procurement systems by foodservice operators is minimal. This study aims to fill this gap by reviewing the literature that identifies potential e-procurement adoption factors and then by testing the latter's impact by gathering data from Greek foodservice operators. Implications for foodservice operators, Internet model developers and e-commerce policy makers are given. Keywords: e-procurement; benefits; adoption; use; supply chain; foodservice operators. 1 Introduction Supply chain management (SCM) has exploded as a management's major concern over the last years, since with the exploitation of new Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) and in particular of Internet the potential to revolutionize, streamline and enhance supply chain operations has flourished (Patterson, Grimm & Corsi, 2003; Cagliano, Caniato & Spina, 2003). Specifically, e-procurement has been identified as an important element of e-business operational excellence for large firms (Barua, Konana, Whinston & Yin, 2001). E-procurement is defined as any ICT designed to facilitate the acquisition of goods by a commercial or a governmental organization over the Internet (Davila, Gupta & Palmer, 2003). E-procurement ICT include e-procurement software, B2B auctions, B2B market exchanges and purchasing consortia that aim to automate workflows, consolidate and leverage organizational spending power and identify new sourcing opportunities online (Davila et al. 2003). Future advances would extend these ICT to create collaborative SCM tools (Cagliano et al. 2003; Folinas et al, 2004). E-procurement's benefits include: lower administration costs, inventories and purchasing prices; shorter order-cycle- time; enhanced cooperation with suppliers, performance and multi-chain operations (Croom, 2000; Sigala, 2003c). Although these advantages may suggest a rapid migration from traditional to e-based procurement models, some firms are slow in adopting e-procurement. Actually, current studies revealed that this tremendous expected growth rate has been revised