Influence of e-procurement tools on the public procurement market attractiveness for small and medium-sized companies: a case of the European Union

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to develop a set of complex recommendations for both managers and policy-makers aimed to the increase of attractiveness and thus of efficiency of the public procurement market in the European Union for the supplying companies of small and medium size. To fulfill this purpose, a range of the following objectives has been set: 1. To identify a place and a role of procurement in the strategy of a firm and of a government; 2. To identify the specifics of government regulation of procurement in the European Union 3. To evaluate the attractiveness of the European market of public procurement for the companies and to identify the main criteria of attractiveness in order to measure it numerically; 4. To evaluate the benefits of e-procurement and to analyze the impact of its implementation on the market efficiency increase; 5. To define a place and a role of small and medium business in the European economy and to evaluate its performance in the public procurement processes; 6. To evaluate the numerical impact of various factors on the market attractiveness in order to develop the practical recommendations for both supplying companies and government regulating bodies. Analysis of existing researches in this field enabled to develop a regression logistic model of evaluation of influence of different factors on the attractiveness of public procurement market for small and medium-sized companies. This model has been empirically tested on the data of the public procurement market of the European Union. The acquired results show that the considered factors influence the access of SMEs to public procurement market with different extent, what allowed elaborating the recommendations aimed to facilitate the access and to improve the market attractiveness.