THE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES CLASSIFICATION BASED ON THE LEVEL OF THEIR BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS E-COMMERCE DEVELOPMENT
Authors
Keywords
business-to-business electronic commerce, cluster analysis, electronic business, information society, European Union
Summary
This paper discusses different author’s views, summarizes them and formulates a definition of “business-to-business” electronic commerce (Â2Â e-commerce). As a result, three theoretical criteria are adopted that reflect the level of e-commerce development in the different European countries. These criteria are: the implementation of Â2Â e-commerce, the depth of technology penetration and the impact of e-commerce on the performance of enterprises. The criteria cover eight variables two of which dropped out in the initial stage of the study. The analysis includes twenty-two European countries – twenty-one from the European Union and Norway.
The variables, involved in the above criteria are used to carry out a cluster analysis in order to classify the European countries for two years – 2010 and 2014. The results of the cluster analysis for 2010 show that B2B e-commerce in the different countries is at different levels. The formed seven statistically significant clusters show a large fragmentation among the different countries in terms of B2B e-commerce implementation. The conclusions of the analysis indicate that the level of e-commerce development on a geographic basis keeps being different – namely, some of the countries of Northern Europe and the Scandinavian countries are leading in the sphere of B2B e-commerce and the new EU Member States are lagging behind in this aspect.
The classification carried out for 2014 shows that there is a convergence in the level of B2B e-commerce development among the European countries. This conclusion is supported by the integration of clusters and the reduction of their number to three.
Pages: 38
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