Part of the reason, according to ”Empowering consumers in e-commerce”, is that as consumers have become more cost-conscious, they are increasingly going online to compare products and save money. In the United States, for example, while most sectors were experiencing a downturn in the first quarter of 2009, online retail sales for 80 retailers rose by an average of 11 percent. The French electronic commerce and distance selling federation estimated that, for the first quarter of 2009, e-commerce sales grew by 26 percent and should increase throughout the year by 20 to 25 percent.
The crisis is also driving more businesses online, attracted to the Internet as a means to increase visibility and markets at relatively low cost. And business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce makes up the lion’s share of online sales: in the US, B2B generated USD 3.1 trillion in sales in 2008 compared to USD 130 billion for sales to consumers.
Looking ahead, the report warns that although e-commerce will keep growing, business and governments will need to do more to strengthen people’s trust in buying online. Most countries have e-commerce laws and regulations, many based on the OECD’s 1999 Guidelines for Consumer Protection in the Context of Electronic Commerce. But the speed with which new technologies help create new products and services can mean that those laws and industry best practices are or will quickly become outdated. Most OECD countries, for example, do not have regulations which specifically tackle privacy issues involving children, except for the US, which passed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), in 1998. The increasing use by business of behavioral advertising techniques which track online behavior to tailor advertising to consumers’ interests is also under government scrutiny.
By: N. Peter Kramer
