Electronic commerce has changed the landscape of business reality, enabling conduits that create opportunities for the ones capable of overcoming their challenges. The causes affecting the adoption have been well documented in many regions of the world. However, there are few studies in Latin America and especially in Central America. Therefore, this research aims to describe the factors that facilitate and inhibit Business-to-Consumer eCommerce adoption in Nicaragua. For this purpose, a literature review on eCommerce adoption in developing countries was carried out to find the possible factors that might affect the adoption based on the entrepreneurial characteristics (innovativeness, knowledge, and perceived behavioral control), the communication of the innovation (innovation decision, communication channels,homophily in communication networks, message about the innovation, and the personal proximity network in the information exchange), the characteristics of the innovation (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, observability, and purchasing costs), and the socioeconomic context (market eReadiness, transport logistics, logistic services, financial institutions eReadiness, telecommunication eReadiness, legal framework, and government commitment) besides a series of control variables considered and supported by the “Diffusion of Innovation Theory” by Rogers (2003). A questionnaire was developed based on prior empirical studies and tested through a pilot test prior to its application. The research comprises a descriptive approach, presenting secondary data about the country and industry related to eCommerce adoption in Nicaragua, and primary data obtained through the quantitative survey which tests the theoretical concepts from eCommerce adoption in this context. The survey had the participation of 315 managers from micro, small, medium, and large companies from all sectors in Nicaragua. The eCommerce status: connected eCommerce, static eCommerce, interactive eCommerce, transactive eCommerce, and integrated eCommerce were empirically investigated, using the survey to determine the characteristics of non-adopters that correspond to the categories of connected and static adopters from interactive, transactive, and integrated according to the eCommerce literature. A descriptive statistics and logistic regression was used to analyze the data and research hypotheses. The analysis demonstrates the technology, communication, managerial characteristics, and contextual factors that may affect eCommerce. Three hypotheses were confirmed: relative advantage, compatibility, and observability had a significant positive influence on the adoption of eCommerce in Nicaragua. Concerning the control variables analyzed, only the variables related to revenue generation for the National sales of products, revenue generation for International sales of services, and revenue generation for National sales of services were significantly influencing eCommerce adoption. It demostrated the importance of technological factors and revenue on eCommerce adoption among other factors. The result from the logistic regression found among all predictors (34) that three variables have an explanatory power and have a significant effect on the adoption of eCommerce: revenue of International sales of services, eCommerce knowledge, and compatibility. The analysis confirmed the relevance of revenue and a technological factor such as compatibility on the adoption of eCommerce besides the knowledge from the managerial dimensions. The descriptive statistics provide insights about the characteristics of the companies; the great majority belong to the services sectors and are small organizations. Adopters represent 53% of the total of the participants companies which are in the interactive, transactive, integrated level of eCommerce, are mostly small companies with 20 years in the market, are located in the Pacific region, and are not export oriented. The present findings might represent a significant contribution to the theoretical framework of eCommerce adoption in developing countries and as a starting point for supporting the development of organizations in Nicaragua and future research.
