European E-commerce

Some of the best e-commerce websites from the European countries showed good profits that may be compared to the ones in the United States. However, a lot of them lost money. According to the analysis performed by the British Chamber of Commerce ¾ of smaller firms and more than ½ of medium firms did not receive any return on the £1,000 to £100,000 that they spend on their e-commerce website.

It is encouraging to mention that during 2002-2004 such countries as Sweden, Netherlands, UK, Finland, Denmark and Germany did quite well in the field of electronic commerce, the main reason for their success being the ability to understand English.

Today e-commerce is highly explored in the European countries. According to the statistics the UK, for instance has only 24 percent of companies that have their own websites, and only 10 percent take orders on-line. This market is opened for the new players to coma and explore, filling the necessary niches. Larger European companies will continue improving their logistics and human resources; however the technology they use for implementing new strategies is still a year behind the United States.

On of the biggest customer worries is security, this specially concerns Germany. France and Norway registered a significant growth in the field of e-commerce. Despite this fact on-line shopping decreased in such countries as Austria, Czech Republic and Finland.

In the United Kingdom the electronic commerce established quite well, with over ten million visitors surfing through the sites in 2001 Christmas period.

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According to the study performed by eMarketer the European electronic commerce accounted $980 billion in 2004. Among the countries that scored well may be outlined Sweden, Netherlands, UK, Finland, Denmark and Germany in addition it is worth mentioning that most businessmen in these countries understand English.

A Boom of E-commerce in Peoples Republic of China

In 2005, according to a survey performed by the China Internet Development Research Center under the Chinese academy of Social Sciences sys Chinese, users purchase more products on-line than the usual level for the Asian-Pacific region.

In comparison with 2004 the on-line transactions in China increased by 158 percent, reaching a sum of 553.1 billion yuan.

There are more than 60 million items sold on-line to 22 million B2C and C2C consumers. An increasing popularity gained such goods as digital products, computers and mobiles. There were only 4.7 percent of people surfing the web who expressed their unwillingness to purchase items on-line. The survey showed that "more than 95 percent of Chinese netizens may become consumers of e-commerce in the future."

According to the report of the China Internet Development Research Center under the Chinese academy of Social Sciences sys Chinese conventional companies will look forward to further boost the electronic commerce. On-line orders will be handled by various economic agents such as supermarkets, manufacturers, and service providers, offering photo printing and flower delivery.

The problem with security became less important due to the development of on-line payments. The report showed that about 70 percent on people shopping on-line chose on-line payment over cash.

Despite the above mentioned on-line shoppers express their worries about the quality of products purchased over the Internet. They are also concerned about the after-sales service. For instance in Beijing, the association of local consumers had to deal with more on-line complaints than the year before.

E-commerce in Latin American Countries

Argentina
This country is the first in the list of Latin American countries regarding the Readiness for the Networked World. It is one of the dot-com leading nations in Latin America. The electronic commerce in this country continues to thrive. Statistics show that back in 2001 Argentineans spent US$231 million online.

Chile
In order to help small and medium enterprises in Chile to effectively adopt and use the electronic commerce the country increases both public and private efforts. However, there are certain problems that threaten the adoption of e-commerce, including the lack of complex management techniques, customer service culture, as well as specific financial issues.

Taking into consideration the above mentioned the country's B2B e-commerce was still able to register US$426 million back in 2000 and B2C e-commerce increased up to US$ 35.7 million.

Despite the fact that nearly all government agencies have official websites, very few provide indeed complex Internet-based operations. The most popular electronic-government initiative is the country's income tax system.

Costa Rica

For the past several years, Costa Rica turned into a well promoter of high-tech investment. It ranks 5^th in the list of Networked Readiness Latin America countries. Its qualitative service industry, ICT workforce, as well as advanced investment policies served well for attracting such giants as Intel.

Columbia
Although Columbia faces some economic problems, Internet popularity continues to grow. A lot of users and domains appear, most of them being in Bogotá and Medellín. The latter's public utility company offers up to 200,000 personal computers and unlimited Internet access for a monthly payment of $US30.

Brazil is the 4^th among Latin American countries in Readiness for the Networked World. It is worth mentioning that over the last 10 years the country was able to attract a lot of FDI. It also has an improved, developed industrial sector, because of the size of its internal market and at the same time due to a significant number of multinational corporations operating on its market.