Refurbishing the Corporate Image with E-Commerce

By introducing e-commerce, German companies pursue in particular two aims. On the one hand, they aim at contributing to a positive corporate image. On the other hand, they do not want to lack in comparison to other competitors providing e-commerce services.

When using e-commerce, 44 per cent of companies making sales via internet consider both aspects to be very important. Especially in the case of service providers, producers of consumer goods, and companies involved in controlling and measurement technology, image cultivation is a major reason for implementing e-commerce. By contrast, only 20 per cent of the companies regard cost savings as a factor of major importance. These are the findings of a representative survey of approximately 4,500 companies with five and more employees in the manufacturing industry and selected service industries. The survey was conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim and partly funded by the “Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg”.

In addition to image and competition, quality and time are also important factors in the implementation of e-commerce. 35 per cent of the companies consider service improvements and the acceleration of processes to be very important aims. Approximately one quarter of the companies considers the extension of business hours and the geographic expansion of sales markets as a result of e-commerce to be very important.

In total, 39 per cent of companies use e-commerce in Germany. E-commerce is mainly used for business to business trade (B2B). In contrast, the business to customer trade over the internet (B2C) plays a rather marginal role.

Find further results of the survey (in German only)

Contact

Dr. Thomas Hempell, E-mail: hempell@zew.de