E-commerce in Europe
NACE Sections
Richard Deiss
Electronic commerce
(e-commerce) can be defined as the trading of
goods and services over computer mediated
networks (such as the Internet); the payment
and/or delivery of the products may or may not
be made over such a network. E-commerce differs
from traditional commerce primarily in the way
information is exchanged and processed. Instead
of being exchanged through direct personal
contact, information is transmitted via a
digital network, or some other electronic
channel.
As enterprises have embraced
this new way of trading, demand for statistics
to analyse the phenomenon has grown, both from
policy makers and the business community. In
response Eurostat, in conjunction with the
European Commission's Directorate General for
Enterprise, launched a pilot survey on
e-commerce in which 13 Member States
participated. This Statistics in Focus presents
key results of the survey for the 2000/2001
reference year (for methodological notes see
page 7). A full report with detailed tables will
be published in Spring 2002.
The main findings of the
survey are (enterprises of 10 employed persons
or more) :
-
92% of enterprises used
computers at the time of the survey, 75% had
web access and 38% had their own web site at
the end of 2000;
-
at the beginning of 2001
26% of enterprises implemented e-purchasing
processes, but only 19% used e-commerce to
make sales;
14% of enterprises used
e-commerce for at least 1% of their purchases in
2000 and 6% used it for at least 1% of their
sales;
business services enterprises
were far more prone to use specialised B2B
marketplaces for e-purchases (7.7%) than for
e-sales (1.9%);
the main barriers to the use
of e-purchasing were uncertainties about the
conditions under which transactions take place,
whilst cost considerations appear as the main
obstacle for not using e-commerce sales;
speed gains are amongst the
main benefits of both e-purchasing and esales,
ahead of cost savings.
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