Commentary

Just an Online Minute... Country Differences In Online Usage

According to research by Taylor Nelson Sofres Information Technology, around nine out of ten companies in the US (93%) and UK (86%) are now using the Internet for activities such as CRM, marketing, order fulfillment and selling to deal with customers. In contrast, six out of ten (60%) organizations in Japan and fewer than four out of ten (36%) organizations in France are using the Internet as a marketing channel or customer service mechanism.

Chandra Chaterji, Senior VP at TNSIT, said that in many ways this is a reflection of the cultural differences towards doing business in different countries.

“In Japan, and to some extent in France too, face-to-face contact continues to be extremely important and the more impersonal approach of an online transaction may still not be considered to be a satisfactory way of conducting business,” she said. Nonetheless, there seems to be a realization that investment in e-solutions has lagged behind and there is a need to start exploring the full potential of online applications to businesses in the future.

Overall, US and UK companies claim to use an average of five different Internet applications out of the ten that they were able to choose from, i.e. CRM, email, employee schedule management, knowledge management, marketing, order fulfillment, selling, supply chain management, training and wireless access to the Internet. In comparison, the average is between two and three different applications in the other countries surveyed.

Whilst companies within the US and UK markets are likely to have invested more in e-solutions in recent years than their Japanese and French counterparts, the research indicates that around two thirds of companies in both the US (63%) and UK (66%) intended to decrease their internet-related expenditure over the next year. In contrast, similar proportions in France (56%) and Japan (61%) expected to increase Internet-related expenditure over the same period of time. This could be explained by the fact that markets such as the US and UK have already made significant levels of investment in e-solutions and are now starting to realize the benefits of this investment, which is not the case in other markets.

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