The engagement of home-based businesses in the digital economy
Darja Reuschke, Colin Mason
Abstract
This paper explores the engagement of home-based businesses in digital trading, measured as proportion of their sales from buying and selling services and products online of all their sales. Findings are drawn from a sample of 994 Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses that are members of the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland. Multivariate findings show that home-based businesses are associated with high proportions of online sales supporting the view of home-based businesses as ‘online’ businesses. However, quantitatively, the overall transformational effects of digital technologies on the nature and processes of entrepreneurship are rather small as the vast majority of home-based businesses, like SMEs that are not home-based, trade offline. Online business models represent a very small proportion of the home-based business sector. Home-based businesses in rural areas do not make greater use of e-commerce. The findings add to the critical literature on the transformative nature of digital entrepreneurship and the emerging home-based business literature that question whether the role of digital technologies and online marketplaces for home-based businesses are being exaggerated, particularly in rural economies.