TABLE 21 Types of Online Web Services in the Wholesale/Retail Industry in Germany
Percent with web service for
a
SME Large Total Global
b
Gift certificates and/or registry
15.4
42.9
15.6
20.6
Product catalog
91.9
91.6
91.9
69.8
Product reviews
44.8
72.7
45.0
48.6
Individual customization
15.4
50.7
15.7
21.3
Account information
16.3
37.6
16.4
21.7
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
The German bank/insurance industry offers a broad variety of online services (Table 22). More
than three quarters (77.2%) of firms support services such as filing applications, filing claims,
paying bills, and transferring funds and 58.3% support web services and tools such as research
and planning tools. Access to account information is more or less obligatory and provided by
65.9%. These services are more common in the banking sector than in the insurance sector.
Again, an obvious digital gap between large and small establishments is not clearly
observable. While SMEs provide online services and online account information less often than
large establishments, they offer online tools to their customers more often.
TABLE 22 Types of Online Web Services in the Banking/Insurance Industry
Percent with web service for
a
SME Large Total Global
b
On line services such as filing
applications, filing claims,
paying bills, transferring funds
76.8
96.1
77.2
53.9
Access to account information
65.8
71.9
65.9
57.3
On line tools such as research
tools, planning tools, etc.
58.7
40.8
58.3
52.0
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
German industry has adopted and implemented e commerce solutions after they proved
successful in other industry sectors or countries. The wait and see mentality together with a
careful but consequent integration is observable in the diffusion pattern, e.g., for EDI (Figure 6)
as well. Due to this, the adoption process of new e commerce innovations in Germany cannot be
characterized as enthusiastic. Nevertheless, in the field of mobile commerce (m commerce),
Europe and to a certain degree Germany has been driven by m commerce hype (Table 23). The
estimated boom of m business has not started yet, since the lack of promising mobile business
models hinders broader diffusion. In comparison to the global sample, slightly more German
firms have installed m commerce solutions (17.9% compared to 13.7%), but until m commerce
has demonstrated its viability, the willingness to invest in further implementation is somewhat
below average (12.3% compared to 18.2%). High implementation rates were only observable in
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