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e-commerce in Europe
Ian Peacock of Netcraft looks at the development of Web based e-commerce in countries in the European Union (EU). By monitoring the extent of e-commerce in the EU and in other comparable regions, an idea of the position of the EU within the global e-commerce arena can be obtained. Then looking at the distribution of e-commerce within the EU, we can identify the key players within e-Europe. This article does not attempt to provide explanation for the results, an analysis of which is likely to involve economic, political and geographical factors.
Introduction
The approach used in the survey is to take the number of secure servers in a region as indicative of the number of electronic commerce sites in that region. This approach to estimating the extent of e-commerce has been adopted by a number of other surveys [1] and [2].
Server counts are presented as 'raw counts' on a regional basis and also as the corresponding per-capita metric. Both measurements have been used as estimators of regional e-commerce revenues. The economic significance of these different measurements is left to the interpretation of the reader. We implicitly assume that a majority of e-commerce per region is conducted within that region. An estimation of e-commerce revenue flows on an inter-district basis would make an interesting future analysis.
The introductory section What is e-commerce? provides a background for the article, and is not intended as a full introduction to electronic commerce and the many issues that it raises.
What is e-commerce?
For starters, e-commerce is a resonating buzzword. Its very visible presence and growth on the Web, and publicity from the likes of IBM [3] ...