Eight European countries are comfortably occupying eight of the top 10 spots on the business-to-customer E-commerce index of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development that ranks countries based on their ecommerce engagement.
Countries involved on the analysis are scored on the reliability of postal service and infrastructure, their access to secure internet servers and the number of internet users in the country and number of people that have account with a mobile money service provider.
Netherlands led the table last year and this year again, they still lead the B2C ecommerce index. On the second spot is Switzerland while Singapore ended up on the third position.
Last year’s 12th position holder – Finland – skyrocketed to fourth position on the list while Germany also moved to 9th position from 16th position. Australia took a short leap to 10th position from 11th position, Singapore and Australia are the only non-European countries on the top 10 list.
New Zealand, Iceland and Sweden dropped out of the top 10 list this year, Sweden saw a major drop in the share internet users this year. As indicated by UNCTAD, low scores for secure servers and postal reliability also added to why these countries dropped on the list.
Although dominating the global ecommerce sounds for good for European ecommerce market, Shamika N. Sirimanne, (director of UNCTAD’s unit that prepares the annual index) expressed a little worry over this development, he was quoted saying: “Our B2C index shows how real and worrying the digital gap is between developed and developing countries”.
For example, in six nations across Europe over 80% of the internet users shop online. But in most low and lower middle-income countries that proportion is below 10%. “There is an urgent need to help less prepared countries improve their infrastructure and build trust among their population”, Sirimanne explains.
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