Small businesses are an important segment of the Brazilian economy because they account for 98% of all enterprises and employ 67% of economically active manpower, but they represent only 20% of Brazil's GDP (SEBRAE, 2005). This shows that these companies can improve productivity by adopting practices that enhance organizational performance, such as e-business. In order for e-business to improve performance in these companies it is has to be properly included in its business model to meet their greater needs. The objective of this paper is to describe the business model used by small enterprises in the trade and service sector for e-business adoption focusing on the main problems in adopting it and the main results obtained by these companies. A descriptive research was conducted in two stages: qualitative, an exploratory study in 13 companies, and quantitative, data collection in 156 companies. The main findings were the centralization of e-business adoption decision-making and its operation by the partner/owners, the use of Internet for product branding as the primary value proposition, and the separation between physical and online operations in most companies. The main results obtained were expansion of geographical scope of product sales, improvement in marketing organization, and use of social networking sites for customer relationship.
E-business; Innovation; Small businesses; Business model
