Design of a decision support system framework for small-business managers: A context of B2C e-commerce environment

This paper describes a decision support system (DSS) design for small business owners/managers to support their strategic decision-making in particular for achieving competitive advantages in the e-commerce environment. To design the DSS framework we collected data through web-based questionnaires that cater for the concerns of owners'/managers' experiences and strategic decisions need - in such environment to adopt competitive features on their websites. We used a constructivist paradigm to capture, utilize and conceptualize problem definitions through a case study investigation to design the DSS solution framework. The findings from case studies suggest that small business owners/managers have the lack of knowledge about internal and external business environment and associated factors that are of significant to their strategic decision support in the rapidly changing B2C e-commerce environment.