How Firms Achieve Technology Readiness for IoT Adoption? Views from Market Orientation and Adaptive Capability: An Abstract

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) technology has been applied in many industries and firms. Previous research has seldom studied and discussed what drive firms to be technologically ready to adopt IoT technology. The research purpose is to study why firms will be technologically ready for the IoT technology adoption based on the views of market orientation and buyer-supplier dependency. The research contribution is to bridge the academic research gap and to provide academic and managerial implications and suggestions by proposing an integrated model to disclose the mechanism how firms’ technology readiness for IoT adoption can be affected by the strategies of their market orientation and buyer-supplier dependency. This study used questionnaire survey to conduct empirical research and to collect data. Taiwanese public offering and listed electronics firms were selected as the sample firms. The questionnaires were distributed to the R&D and sales/marketing managers in those sample firms to collect empirical data. The data collected from returned questionnaires was analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the constructs robustness, examine the proposed hypotheses, and verify the goodness-of-fit of research model. The results proved good reliability, validity, and goodness-of-fit of the research model. The study found that a firm’s dependence on customers has positive influence on its responsive market orientation. The findings also showed that firm’s dependence on customers positively influences its proactive market orientation. Both the responsive market orientation and proactive market orientation were found to have significant influence on a firm’s adaptive capability. Furthermore, a firm owing more adaptive capability will be more technologically ready to adopt IoT technology. However, proactive market orientation has not significantly direct influence on technology readiness for IoT, and only has the indirect influence through the mediation of adaptive capability. Being contrary to previous studies, the other interesting finding disclosed that IoT technology uncertainty has positive influence on technology readiness for IoT adoption.