E-commerce in the Developed Countries

While scholars disagree substantially about how E-commerce affects real income levels, there is little disagreement that the advent and growth of e-commerce “promises to have substantial beneficial effects on worldwide standards of living”. The general perception is that the unprecedented growth of the digital economy has been “a major contributor to economic growth, the booming stock market, and the revival of productivity”. In the US, the U. S.

Census Bureau reported that “E-commerce, on a percent change basis, outperformed total economic activity in all four major economic sectors (manufacturing shipments, merchant wholesale, retail trade sales, and selected service revenues) measured between 2002 and 2003. ” E-commerce—both its dollar value and share of economic activity—varied markedly among key economic sectors. The following table shows the value and shares of economic activity of the four sectors identified above for 2003:

The table above also shows the value of U. S. manufacturing of e-commerce shipments (E-shipments) in 2002-2003. As shown in the table, e-shipments gained a 12. 1 percent increase, from $752 billion in 2002 to $843 billion in 2003. E-shipments, as shown in Table 2, accounted for 21. 2 percent of the value of shipments from U. S. manufacturing plants in 2003. This information was collected in the 2003 Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM), a survey of more than 55,000 plants.

In the UK, the National Statistics Online reported that “the value of Internet sales more than doubled between 2002 and 2003; from ? 19 billion to ? 39. 5 billion. The value of sales over the Internet accounted for 17 percent of sales over all kinds of ICTs in 2003 and 2 per cent of the total sales by the non-financial sectors in 2003. The rise, from ? 19bn in 2002 to ? 39. 5bn in 2003, represented an increase of 108 per cent in the value of sales on-line, compared to a rise of just 25 per cent of businesses reporting that they sell on-line.

This suggests that, in addition to more businesses selling on-line in 2003, businesses are also selling more. ” This positive impact of E-commerce in the global economy is remarkable and indeed uncontestable. Since its popularization in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the use of Internet in conducting business has helped many developed countries enhance their potential that would led to dramatic growth in trade, increase markets, improve efficiency and effectiveness and transform business processes. This gives them an extreme advantage over the developing countries.