Surviving the challenges of 21st century retailing - proposing a way forward for independent DIY retailers in the UK using e-commerce.

The number of independently owned brick-and-mortar DIY retailers in the UK is falling yearon year due to the rise of online retailing and less footfall on the high street and town centre.This online retailing is dominated by the big retailers B&Q, Homebase, Toolstation and others.Independent DIY retailers’ participation in e-commerce is marginal though, e-commerceprovides many benefits to resource-constraint and geographically niched retail SMEs,connecting sellers and customers from across the world.Researchers emphasised e-commerce adoption for the small retail business to tackle thechallenges of 21st century retailing to survive and grow. However, very few independent DIYretailers adopted online retailing. Moreover, what affects independent DIY retailer’s ecommerceadoption is largely unknown. Therefore, this exploratory study aimed toinvestigate independently owned DIY retailers’ e-commerce adoption challenges, practicesand opportunities to propose e-commerce adoption strategies. By employing a qualitative indepthinterview method, using convenience and purposive sampling, this study interviewed20 independent DIY retailers; ten retailers are non-e-commerce adopters, and the rest are ecommerceadopters.This empirical study found that the current e-commerce adoption models for retail SMEs areimpractical for the independent DIY retailers that hinder their participation in e-commerceand proposes a practical model, ‘Piggyback-style e-commerce adoption andinternationalisation model’. This model suggests that independent DIY retailers first adopt emarketplacesto sell locally and internationally, progressing onto creating their e-commercechannels and offer simultaneously through all the channels.