If you are an IT or internet service provider, in the telecommunications game or running a business in rural Australia, then listen up.

The latest research study from the Australian Business Foundation contains some fresh market intelligence about how e-commerce and online technologies are impacting on the way business is being done in rural towns and regional centres.

The Australian Business Foundation's research – based on interviews with rural business people in six typical inland towns in northern NSW – was undertaken by Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill of the University of New England. Their findings have just been released, in a report called: "Changing Business Realities? The Implications of E-Commerce Technologies for Rural Non-Farm Businesses".

The headline finding is that e-commerce technologies are changing rural business realities, but this change is incremental, not revolutionary.

Both the dire threats and the unbounded opportunities from e-commerce predicted for business in the bush have been overstated.

The businesses interviewed are taking a cautious but experimental approach. They are taking small steps and making limited investments to learn and to test the possibilities and benefits that online tools can bring to their businesses.

E-commerce and online methods were found to be impacting on rural non-farm business operations in the following key ways:

• Rural businesses are enthusiastically adopting the simplest, lowest cost applications with the most immediate benefits.

Online technologies improve business processes and bring significant cost and time savings in mail, banking, information retrieval, document transfer and other administration functions like responding to telephone enquiries, printing brochures and servicing distant markets.

Case study examples of this widespread use of e-commerce tools range from a law firm, to a livestock scales manufacturer, to a specialty candlemaker.

But for those businesses going beyond cost-saving measures, their interest in e-commerce is motivated either because it is a good fit with their business strategy, or because they are at a critical stage or 'trigger point' in the life of their business, e.g. developing a new product or responding to a new government regulation.

• Rural businesses are using online tools to cement customer relationships and enhance the attractiveness and value of their products and services.

Some firms are using the internet to add new attributes and features to their products and services to better meet the needs of their customers and to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Among the case study examples are a supplier of high quality chemical-free table fish which uses its website to provide customers detailed information on how its fish are raised and fed, nutritional data and preparation advice.

An antiquarian and second hand book dealer has significantly improved the speed and coverage of its service to online enquirers by an alliance with a large North American internet book exchange, able to track millions of titles from thousands of book dealers around the world. This has greatly broadened the market and sales of this book dealer in rural Australia.

A clothing retailer came up with an imaginative amalgam of 'bricks and clicks' to attract a more youthful market with an online member registration program for monthly prizes, new stock and discount details and links to sites about music and surfing events. This was an attempt at relationship marketing bridging an online site with visits to the physical store.

• Niche or specialist rural businesses or those who are in the information business are creating new opportunities and wider markets through online tools.

Specific craft, hobby or recreational and tourist businesses with a widespread community of interest found that using the web to promote their products and services eliminated the tyranny of distance and brought new sales from around the world. The same applied to rural firms whose stock-in-trade is information or consultancy services. Rural location is irrelevant to their serving wide geographic markets.

• E-commerce and online technologies are recognised by some rural businesses as a defensive tool against future threats or external pressures.

There was evidence that some rural businesses, while not seeing an imminent threat to their business from e-commerce applications, were adopting such technologies to forestall possible loss of market share by matching or pre-empting the actions of competitors or potential competitors. In other cases, they were anticipating a 'customer push' to do business electronically and adopting e-commerce tools to avoid losing business in the future.

These sentiments were expressed at interview by a freight forwarding company, a seed, feed and fertiliser merchant and a rural newspaper – among others. Far from showing rural business people as off the pace, the Australian Business Foundation study paints a richer picture of the way e-commerce is influencing business life in rural Australia.

We see e-commerce activities being prudently pioneered by local innovators who 'learn by doing' and who experiment when there is a good chance of e-commerce enhancing their business operations.