Internet, while only 37.9% in the wholesale/retail industry and 35.2% in the banking/insurance 

industry, respectively, do so.

Extremely unimportant are government related factors which, consequently, cannot be regarded 

as drivers for the usage of Internet technologies. Neither government demand for online 

procurement capability (2.1%), nor direct governmental incentives or subsidies (2.0%) are 

mentioned as significant drivers for adoption decisions. On the contrary, the results suggest that 

lack of e commerce knowledge and projects inside the government will become an impediment 

not only today but especially in the near future. While most business to business (B2B) 

processes can be conducted online, firms have to prepare paper based and therefore inefficient 

processes in parallel to the business to government (B2G) side. 

While Table 12 shows that it is impossible to identify the most important driver or  killer 

application  supporting the diffusion of e commerce solutions, Table 13 deals with the most 

important barriers. In comparison to the global average, most mentioned barriers are less 

important or restrictive, e.g., the need for face to face customer interaction (11.9% in Germany 

in comparison to 33.8% in the global sample), is not at all interpretable as a significant barrier 

for e commerce. Concerns about privacy of data or even security issues are no longer an 

important obstacle in Germany (only 24.9% selected this issue as an important barrier) in 

contrast to the global sample (44.2%). This might be a good indicator for the maturity level of 

the offered online services and security applications, but also indicates that Germans have had 

good experiences with the Internet and are losing more of their resistance to use it. Further 

unimportant impeding reasons are Internet access costs due to the open and competitive 

telecommunications market (only 1.6%), the inadequate support of business laws (only 5.2%) 

due to one of the earliest e commerce and digital signature legislation in the world and the 

taxation of online sales (only 1.5%), which is the same as traditional businesses in Germany and 

Europe. While the latter factors are unimportant barriers in Germany in contrast to other 

countries, German establishments have other important problems. Finding qualified and 

experienced e commerce staff is more of a problem in Germany (41.2%) than anywhere else 

(26.5%). The lack of IT specialists is especially critical in the retail/wholesale industry, where 

nearly 50% of the respondents mentioned this as a significant obstacle.  

As expected, the low diffusion of credit cards in Germany is an important obstacle in the B2C 

area (21.6%). In fact, it is more common to use debit cards for payment at stores or gas stations 

instead of using credit cards. Although the number of credit card owners increases the 

corresponding possibility of abuse using the card number online, the recognition of this potential 

has reduced the number of potential users notably. 

An additional important barrier for German industry is the necessity of required structural 

changes of existing business processes when implementing e commerce solutions. More than 

30% of German establishments are worried or not able to implement needed organizational 

changes. This issue is especially salient in the retail/wholesale industry (34.2%), where the 

necessary prerequisites such as ERP or a general IT infrastructure are less likely to be available 

in comparison to other sectors. In order to gain full benefits from e commerce, the needed 

change efforts are therefore greater in the manufacturing or banking industries.  

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