Empirical Analysis of the Determinants of E-commerce Adoption. Evidence from the European Union (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Economics - Other, grade: 1,0, LMU Munich (Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organisation), language: English, abstract: Motivated by a rising popularity and economic as well as political importance of the E-commerce sector, this research investigates how the high-speed broadband internet coverage and the usage intensity of people influence the share of web buyers in a country. This question is examined by studying a comprehensive panel data set covering the EU-28 member states in the period from 2003 until 2018.

Findings suggest that a more widespread availability of fixed broadband internet exerts a significant positive influence on the amount of online shoppers, while mobile broad-band connectivity is found to be adversely related. Furthermore, the results claim that the more frequent internet users, the higher the national percentage of internet purchasers. These outcomes are of relevance to all stakeholders with interest to push the devel-opment of the European E-commerce sector further.

Bill Gates has once predicted that the internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow. Being a vision at that time, current developments show that this statement addresses no longer only the future - it has never before described the present so suitably. Within the last years, the internet has evolved to be a central information hub for individuals and is nowadays tightly embedded into our everyday life.

Information on nearly everything can be gathered from the web, a big part of social life takes place in the virtual sphere and the internet has entered the professional space a long time ago - the progressing digitalization moves a steadily increasing share of activities online. Since access to high-speed internet is vastly increasing, people get accustomed to an ubiquitous connectivity.

One application of the internet that steadily gained popularity for many years now re-lates to an initial purpose of the "town square", which used to be the location of a market. Facilitated by the broad deployment of network technologies and their rapid devel-opment, companies increasingly offer their products via online channels. Consumers value the convenient shopping experience accessible around the clock and benefit from a greater variety of merchandise as well as often lower prices. Firms profit by cost savings, an augmented customer base and new sales options in return.