Customer, Product, and Stock Barriers to B2B E-Commerce Adoption: Evidence from Prysmian Spain’s Digital Platform

This thesis contributes to B2B e-commerce adoption theory by showing, through the case of Prysmian Spain’s digital platform, that adoption depends on multi-level alignment rather than platform access alone. While digital transformation has increased the strategic importance of online channels, many industrial firms continue to experience a significant gap between platform availability and actual customer usage. The study addresses this issue by examining how customer characteristics, product catalog coverage, order-level conditions, and stock availability influence the migration from traditional ordering channels to a digital B2B environment. Drawing on internal SAP and Salesforce data covering all orders sold in Spain during 2025, the research adopts a multi-level analytical framework that combines descriptive statistics, K-means clustering, logistic regression models, ordinary least squares estimation, and propensity score matching. The findings reveal that B2B adoption is not a binary outcome driven solely by platform access, but rather a process shaped by the alignment of customer readiness, product suitability, transaction feasibility, and operational reliability. A substantial gap emerges between customer enablement and actual platform usage, while customer segmentation identifies a large group of high-potential users characterized by strong catalog compatibility but limited digital engagement. At the product level, standardized and recurrently purchased items are significantly more likely to be included in the digital catalog than customized or technically complex products. Furthermore, stock availability proves to be a critical operational factor, as higher inventory reliability is associated with a lower likelihood of offline ordering. The study contributes to the literature by conceptualizing B2B e-commerce adoption as a multi-level alignment process involving customers, products, orders, and inventory conditions. From a managerial perspective, it proposes a data-driven framework for prioritizing customer activation, catalog expansion, and stock allocation, providing practical guidance for improving digital channel adoption and commercial performance in industrial B2B settings.