E-commerce is applied in a supply-chain operational environment in order to integrate internal information and improve supply-chain coordination. However, many researchers and practitioners remain unable to advise how best to characterize the scope of e-commerce diffusion in a supply-chain operational environment; should it be diffused to the supplier, customer, both, or others? This study involved a practical investigation of e-commerce diffusion in a supply-chain operational environment. In

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... is study, we adopted the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) database and tested 491 global samples from the IMSS. The test results indicated that e-commerce should be completely diffused to the supplier and customer, and the majority of competitive performance will be satisfied by complete diffusion.