E-Commerce: A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep

E-Commerce: A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep Global E-Commerce Survey: Report of Results Overall and by Industry Sector Kenneth L. Kraemer, Jason Dedrick and Debora Dunkle Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO) University of California, Irvine The use of electronic commerce has been expected to spread rapidly around the world with the growth of the Internet. Although e-commerce existed before the Internet, through EDI for example, e-commerce was expected to spread more rapidly with the Internet because of its openness, lower costs, wider availability and greater network effects as compared to private networks. Two key issues are the extent to which firms are adopting Internet-based e-commerce, and the impacts on those that do adopt. Therefore, this study sought to benchmark the use of the Internet for e-commerce in different countries in order to get an understanding of the state of its use and impacts in 2002. The survey was planned to provide insights into adoption and usage of the Internet and e-commerce by country, industry and firm. Hence, the study was not concerned with measuring overall levels of e- commerce use within countries or globally, but rather with how the Internet is being used for business among relatively more technologically advanced businesses in each country. We surveyed 2,139 establishments in 10 countries—Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Taiwan and the United States—that use the Internet to buy, sell or support products and services. Countries were selected to include developed, newly industrializing and developing nations. We included establishments in three major industry sectors that are known to be more extensive and have advanced users of e-commerce—manufacturing, distribution (wholesale and retail), and finance (banking and insurance). The sample breaks down into approximately 300 establishments in the U.S. and 200 in each of the other countries, and is evenly split by industry as well as firm size (from 25 to 250 and over 250 employees) in each country. Weights based on the actual distribution of establishments in each country for each sector were applied. The results in this report are based on the weighted sample. This report focuses on the differences and similarities by industry sector, and covers the following topics: Influence of Globalization Use of E-commerce Related Technologies Enterprise Integration Strategy This research is a part of the Globalization and E-Commerce project of the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO) at the University of California, Irvine. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0085852. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. ©Center for Research on Information Technology & Organizations (CRITO) University of California, Irvine Industry Sector Snapshot-1 August 1,2002