13.4% reported the sole use of B2C, while the B2C area in the banking/insurance industry seems 

to gain more and more importance with 16.1%. Although the overall percentage of 

establishments offering B2C seems to be rather low for an industrialized country, one can 

observe a steadily growing consumer demand for such services. Nearly one third of consumer 

sales of the investigated firms are already conducted online (30.7%), especially in the 

retail/wholesale industry, with 32.7%. The manufacturing sector reported 7.5% of B2C sales; 

quite a low level of direct sales to private end consumers because this is rather uncommon for 

industry firms in Germany.  

As expected, the highest ratio of online sales use for both B2C and B2B commerce is observable 

with the retail/wholesale industry, where 20.7% conduct both types of online sales at the same 

time.  

Although Germans are evidently concerned about security issues, especially related to online 

payment procedures, most websites support such functionalities. A high 41.8% of all 

establishments in the investigated industry sectors offer online payments on their website, 

especially in the retail/wholesale industry (44.5%). 

TABLE 19  Online Sales 

Banking/ 

Manufacturing

a

Wholesale/Retail 

Distribution

a

Insurance

a

Total

a

GER 

Global

b

GER 

Global

b

GER 

Global

b

GER 

Global

b

B2B 

only 

(%) 

19.3 

16.3 40.5 

12.0 12.0 6.7 34.0 

12.9 

B2C only (%) 

2.9 

4.0 

13.4 

7.7 

16.1 

14.3 

11.5 

7.1 

B2B and B2C (%) 

9.9 

11.2 

20.7 

16.9 

19.7 

15.5 

18.4 

15.0 

Mean 

percentage 

of 

Total consumer sales 

conducted online (all 

establishments) 

0.5 2.1  11.2 4.5  7.3 5.1  8.8 3.8 

Total business sales 

conducted online (all  

establishments) 

5.5 3.2  9.2 4.4  7.9 4.0  8.4 4.0 

Total consumer sales 

conducted online (only  

   those doing B2C sales) 

7.5 

15.3 

32.7 

19.5 

22.2 

19.6 

30.7 

18.6 

Total business sales 

conducted online (only 

those doing B2B sales) 

19.2 

12.2 15.1 

16.1 26.5 

21.9 16.0 

15.1 

Websites supporting 

online payment (only 

those doing online   

sales) 

27.8 

25.0 44.5 

36.7 28.8 

37.4 41.8 

33.6 

Notes:

a

Responses were weighted based on the total number of establishments by employee size within the sector for each 

country.  

 b 

Consists of weighted survey responses in 10 countries combined: United States, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, France, 

Denmark, Singapore, Taiwan, China and Japan.   

Source:  CRITO Global E Commerce Survey, 2002 

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