IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bit/bsrysr/v12y2021i1p197-215n4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Enterprise Digital Divide: Website e-Commerce Functionalities among European Union Enterprises

Author

Listed:
  • Jaković Božidar

    (The University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics and Business, Zagreb, Croatia)

  • Ćurlin Tamara

    (The University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics and Business, Zagreb, Croatia)

  • Miloloža Ivan

    (The University of Osijek, Faculty for Dental Medicine & Health, Osijek, Croatia)

Abstract

Background: Information and communication technologies (ICTs) gained prevalent organizational and structural value in the modern economy. E-commerce is one of the sectors directly influenced by technological change. However, not all countries have the same opportunities to develop e-commerce growth; there are significant discrepancies in ICT utilization worldwide, known as the digital divide. Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to explore the level of difference among European countries regarding the e-commerce functionalities in their enterprises using a cluster analysis. Methods/Approach: To accomplish the paper goal, the k-means cluster analysis was conducted on the Eurostat data from 2019. Enterprises from 28 European countries were taken into consideration. The Kruskal-Wallis test is used to explore if the differences among clusters regarding the digital development, measured by the Digital Economy and Society Index are significant. Results: The investigation confirmed that there are significant differences among European countries regarding the development of e-commerce. However, a similar level of e-commerce is not related to economic and digital development. Conclusions: Since the relationship between economic development and e-commerce development in European countries is not linear, country-level policies are likely to be significant factors driving e-commerce development, which leads to the need for further investigation of this issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Jaković Božidar & Ćurlin Tamara & Miloloža Ivan, 2021. "Enterprise Digital Divide: Website e-Commerce Functionalities among European Union Enterprises," Business Systems Research, Sciendo, vol. 12(1), pages 197-215, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bit:bsrysr:v:12:y:2021:i:1:p:197-215:n:4
    DOI: 10.2478/bsrj-2021-0013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2478/bsrj-2021-0013
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2478/bsrj-2021-0013?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thierry Pénard & Rozenn Perrigot, 2017. "Online search – Online purchase in franchising: An empirical analysis of franchisor website functionality," Post-Print halshs-01615117, HAL.
    2. Kremez, Zhanna & Frazer, Lorelle & Thaichon, Park, 2019. "The effects of e-commerce on franchising: Practical implications and models," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 158-168.
    3. Pazaitis, Alex & De Filippi, Primavera & Kostakis, Vasilis, 2017. "Blockchain and value systems in the sharing economy: The illustrative case of Backfeed," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 105-115.
    4. Adegboyega Ojo & Samuel Adebayo, 2017. "Blockchain as a Next Generation Government Information Infrastructure: A Review of Initiatives in D5 Countries," Public Administration and Information Technology, in: Adegboyega Ojo & Jeremy Millard (ed.), Government 3.0 – Next Generation Government Technology Infrastructure and Services, pages 283-298, Springer.
    5. Szeles, Monica Răileanu, 2018. "New insights from a multilevel approach to the regional digital divide in the European Union," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 452-463.
    6. Alex Pazaitis & Primavera De Filippi & Vasilis Kostakis, 2017. "Blockchain and Value Systems in the Sharing Economy: The Illustrative Case of Backfeed," The Other Canon Foundation and Tallinn University of Technology Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics 73, TUT Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance.
    7. Amaro, Suzanne & Duarte, Paulo & Henriques, Carla, 2016. "Travelers’ use of social media: A clustering approach," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1-15.
    8. Sugar, Catherine A. & James, Gareth M., 2003. "Finding the Number of Clusters in a Dataset: An Information-Theoretic Approach," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 98, pages 750-763, January.
    9. Dana E. Harrison & Haya Ajjan, 2019. "Customer relationship management technology: bridging the gap between marketing education and practice," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(4), pages 205-219, December.
    10. Zhuming Chen & Yushan Li & Yawen Wu & Junjun Luo, 2017. "The transition from traditional banking to mobile internet finance: an organizational innovation perspective - a comparative study of Citibank and ICBC," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 3(1), pages 1-16, December.
    11. Alex Pazaitis & Primavera de Filippi & Vasilis Kostakis, 2017. "Blockchain and value systems in the sharing economy: The illustrative case of Backfeed," Post-Print hal-01676881, HAL.
    12. Di Fatta, Davide & Patton, Dean & Viglia, Giampaolo, 2018. "The determinants of conversion rates in SME e-commerce websites," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 161-168.
    13. Pénard, Thierry & Perrigot, Rozenn, 2017. "Online search – Online purchase in franchising: An empirical analysis of franchisor website functionality," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 164-172.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lennart Ante, 2020. "A place next to Satoshi: foundations of blockchain and cryptocurrency research in business and economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1305-1333, August.
    2. Min Xu & Xingtong Chen & Gang Kou, 2019. "A systematic review of blockchain," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 5(1), pages 1-14, December.
    3. Plinio Limata, 2020. "Blockchain and Institutions (I): trust and (de)centralization," CERBE Working Papers wpC35, CERBE Center for Relationship Banking and Economics.
    4. Emmanuelle Reuter, 2022. "Hybrid business models in the sharing economy: The role of business model design for managing the environmental paradox," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 603-618, February.
    5. Goldberg, Mitchell & Schär, Fabian, 2023. "Metaverse governance: An empirical analysis of voting within Decentralized Autonomous Organizations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    6. Tandon, Anushree & Kaur, Puneet & Mäntymäki, Matti & Dhir, Amandeep, 2021. "Blockchain applications in management: A bibliometric analysis and literature review," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    7. Lee, Jei Young, 2019. "A decentralized token economy: How blockchain and cryptocurrency can revolutionize business," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 62(6), pages 773-784.
    8. Islam, A.K.M. Najmul & Mäntymäki, Matti & Turunen, Marja, 2019. "Why do blockchains split? An actor-network perspective on Bitcoin splits," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    9. Kajikawa, Yuya & Mejia, Cristian & Wu, Mengjia & Zhang, Yi, 2022. "Academic landscape of Technological Forecasting and Social Change through citation network and topic analyses," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    10. Nallapaneni Manoj Kumar & Shauhrat S. Chopra, 2022. "Leveraging Blockchain and Smart Contract Technologies to Overcome Circular Economy Implementation Challenges," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-18, August.
    11. Friedman, Nicola & Ormiston, Jarrod, 2022. "Blockchain as a sustainability-oriented innovation?: Opportunities for and resistance to Blockchain technology as a driver of sustainability in global food supply chains," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    12. Fernandes, Bruno & Chimenti, Paula & Nogueira, Roberto, 2020. "A taxonomy of initiatives at work in the sharing economy," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 81-86.
    13. Anna Adamik & Michał Nowicki & Andrius Puksas, 2022. "Energy Oriented Concepts and Other SMART WORLD Trends as Game Changers of Co-Production—Reality or Future?," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-38, June.
    14. Klarin, Anton, 2020. "The decade-long cryptocurrencies and the blockchain rollercoaster: Mapping the intellectual structure and charting future directions," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    15. Kareem Mohamed & Amr Aziz & Belal Mohamed & Khaled Abdel‐Hakeem & Mostafa Mostafa & Ayman Atia, 2019. "Blockchain for tracking serial numbers in money exchanges," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 193-201, October.
    16. Maria J. Pouri & Lorenz M. Hilty, 2018. "Conceptualizing the Digital Sharing Economy in the Context of Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-19, November.
    17. Adrien Labaeye, 2019. "Sharing Cities and Commoning: An Alternative Narrative for Just and Sustainable Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-23, August.
    18. Chen Kai, 2019. "Value management in Blockchain technology related projects," Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence, Sciendo, vol. 13(1), pages 194-205, May.
    19. Séverine Le Loarne Lemaire & Meriam Razgallah & Adnane Maalaoui & Sascha Kraus, 2022. "Becoming a green entrepreneur: An advanced entrepreneurial cognition model based on a practiced-based approach," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 801-828, June.
    20. Rojanakit, Patcharapar & Torres de Oliveira, Rui & Dulleck, Uwe, 2022. "The sharing economy: A critical review and research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 1317-1334.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    e-commerce; website functionalities; digital divide; European Union;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bit:bsrysr:v:12:y:2021:i:1:p:197-215:n:4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciendo.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.