Global E-Commerce: Rationale, Digital Divide, and Strategies to Bridge the Divide

The Internet revolution is sweeping the globe with such swiftness that companies around the world are trying to understand what is occurring, what it all means, where it is going, and how to leverage this new opportunity. In spite of the global nature of this new revolution, studies indicate that almost three fourths of all e- commerce (EC) is done in the United States today and that the United States accounts for 90 percent of all commercial web sites. The purposes of this study are to address several of the underlying rationales for the previous observations, to analyze this digital divide, to propose possible strategies to bridge and overcome this divide, and to propose some specific propositions based on the extensive literature search provided here. To address these questions, this paper provides a general framework including a discussion of present advantages of global EC growth, national and corporate EC comparisons, an analysis of EC limitations, and the development of strategies for global EC growth.