Online Shopping Across Borders
October 27, 2009 by Anna Farmery
Filed under Social Media
I have always thought that the internet was the ultimate source of The World Being Flat….I have enver thought about barriers to trade.
Therefore I was intrigued to see a Europa press release regarding the trading between EU nations.
Just look at this phrase “only 7% of people shop online cross border. Although 50 percent of European retailers are online, only 21% sell in other Member States.”
The online tests showed that “the transaction was blocked 6 times out of 10. In the case of some computer and electronic equipment the failure rate reached 8 times out of 10. Only two countries (Spain and Austria) exhibited success rates slightly above 50%. Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Belgium are the countries where attempts at purchasing cross border were most likely to fail.”
These findings were amazing for me as you would surely have expected a much higher degree of consumer engagement across the large trading bloc of the European Union? Maybe it shows that language remains the barrier not necessarily geography?
