The impact of e-commerce on value creation and performance firm level evidence from French companies.

Summary This thesis is a micro-econometric study that aims to investigate the relationship between innovation, e-commerce and productivity. In order to achieve this objective, this work aims to identify the structure of firms that practice online sales. The present thesis is essentially composed of three studies in which statistical data are exploited that concern French companies of all sizes (micro, small, medium and large). The databases were constructed from the ICT and e-commerce, CIS, R&D and FARE surveys. The FARE survey provides additional financial statistics. The first study aims to determine the impact of e-commerce on productivity using a panel of data from 2008 to 2012. The data is analyzed using the Cobb-Douglas production function. The results show that e-commerce has a positive and significant impact on productivity during this period. Thus, e-commerce contributes to promoting the productivity of French companies. The second study aims to understand the motivations that drive microenterprises to adopt online sales and to evaluate their productivity. In this study, the Propensity Score Matching method is used. To evaluate the differences in productivity between, on the one hand, microenterprises that practice online sales and, on the other hand, those that do not use the e-commerce tool for the year 2012. The results show that the turnover generated by the microenterprises practicing online sales is higher, and they show a better productivity in comparison with the enterprises that do not practice it. The third objective is to determine the impact of R&D and innovation in ICT, especially e-commerce, on the performance of French firms in 2008. A variant of the CDM model (Crépon, Duguet and Mairesse) is applied. This study describes the link between R&D spending, e-commerce, innovation and productivity. The results show that R&D is an important factor for innovation, and ICT capital is also a key factor for e-commerce. Moreover, although both factors (R&D output specifically technological product/process innovations and e-commerce), positively affect productivity, the positive impact is more pronounced for innovation.