Antecedents and Impact of E-commerce Adoption among New Venture Firms: Evidence from Tourism and Hospitality Industry Onkar Nath Mishra 1 and Saurabh Gupta 2 Abstract Newly created ventures face many challenges, of which, successfully competing with rivals is a daunting task. In order to grow, and turn profitable, start-up firms must extensively search for strategies that create and sustain competitive advantage. Adoption of e-commerce is considered as a very potent strategy to beat competitors and generate profits. Taking tourism and hospitality, an information-intensive industry, this study set two primary objectives regarding e-commerce adoption. First, to investigate the antecedents of e-commerce adoption and second, to gather empirical evidences about the impact of e-commerce adoption on such firms. The study was motivated by the paucity of literature on adoption of e-commerce by start-up firms, especially in the tourism and hospitality industry. The empirical results showed that market- and organization-related factors were prime determinants of e-commerce adoption by start-up firms. The study also confirmed the improved performance of tourism and hospitality start-ups as a result of e-commerce adoption. Key Words E-commerce, Start-ups, Tourism and Hospitality, GCC Countries, Business Performance Vision 1–10 © 2020 MDI Reprints and permissions: in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india DOI: 10.1177/0972262920927940 journals.sagepub.com/home/vis Article 1 Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra Ranchi, Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates (UAE). 2 Jaipuria Institute of Management, Indirapuram, Gaziabad, India. Corresponding author: Onkar Nath Mishra, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra Ranchi, RAKEZ Academic Zone, Al Dhait South, PO. Box: 41222, Ras al Khaimah, UAE. E-mail: aavirmishra@gmail.com Introduction Newly created ventures face many challenges ranging from availability of cheaper and adequate finance to successfully competing with the rivals. In order to grow and turn profit- able, the start-up firms must extensively search for strate- gies that create and sustain competitive advantage. Today, adoption of e-commerce strategy is considered one such potent strategy to create sustainable competitive advan- tage for the start-up firms by offering several advantages (Oliveira & Martins, 2010; Wu et al., 2006). The available literature suggests advantages such as increased sales, lower costs, increased productivity and extended market reach (Rahayu & Day, 2017). It has provided a way for businesses to process, collect and share the information with their stakeholders and customers (Kollberg & Dreyer, 2006). It not only provides technological advantage leading to lower costs and high profitability but has also become the backbone of modern business organizations. Therefore, there is no surprise that e-commerce has emerged as a pow- erful determinant of business performance of commercial entities, both new and old (Salwani et al., 2009). Currently, there is hardly any sector that is alien to e-commerce. Many organizations and industries such as electronics, banking, retail and education industry have realized the potential of e-commerce (Norzaidi et al., 2007). It has helped these industries to perform efficiently and effectively. With a rapid rise in the internet users and pene- tration of internet services, the prospects of e-commerce seem bright. Despite multiple benefits of e-commerce adoption, start-up firms are not very enthusiastic in adopting e- commerce. There are several studies documenting the various reasons for new ventures being less receptive to the adoption of e-commerce. Several explanations have been offered such as high cost, poor IT infrastructure, lack of interest from business partners, lack of trained human resources, little support from government and security issues (Jones et al., 2013; Kotelnikov, 2007). It is thus evident from literature survey that adoption and success of new technology like e-commerce by new ventures requires support from various stakeholders such as owners and promoters, managers and governments.