Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
as the country's internet infrastructure expands with monetary assistance from the
European Union. Foreign firms, such as the French-owned Carrefour Group, have
played a significant role in this respect. Major Polish e-commerce sites as Allegro.pl
and Merlin.pl are benefiting from the growth. Similarly, two-thirds of Czech internet
users engage in e-tailing. E-commerce in the Balkans is also underdeveloped: in
Greece, for example, only 20 % of companies with ten or more employees have the
capacity to take on-line orders (Economist
2006a
). In Serbia, the cessation of hos-
tilities in 2000 has led to an explosion of internet-related activities, including a
nascent software industry in Belgrade, although collectively they remain small in
comparison to economically advanced countries; tentative steps include the for-
mation of Knjizara.com, an online bookstore emulating Amazon.com, and
Balkanmedia, a Web-based music store (Travica et al. 2007). Bulgaria, despite its
relatively well developed software and telecommunications sectors, has the least
developed e-commerce sector of the European Union; with modest incomes and
fears for consumer rights, only 6 % of the population shops on-line.
Turkey's e-commerce sector suffers from an overloaded telecommunications
infrastructure and the lack of adequate legal safeguards to protect consumers and
intellectual property. However, the Turkish government has supported the devel-
opment of e-commerce as part of its efforts to gain entry into the European Union,
including the E-Transformation Turkey Project, initiated in 2002, which aims to
coordinate
and
standardize
various
EDI
and
business-to-business
Internet
activities.
4.7.3 Russia
Russian e-commerce reflects both the dynamism and pitfalls of an emerging
economy (Chipaitis
2002
; Decker et al.
2005
). E-commerce in Russia emerged
following the financial crisis of 1998, which forced many entrepreneurs to improve
productivity by exploring electronic opportunities (Doern and Fey
2006
). In 2007,
the Russian Central Bank reported that 9.4 % of all economic transactions in the
country were made over the internet (Ecommerce Journal
2008
), a 218 % increase
over the previous year. Access to such channels is highly circumscribed by wealth,
power, and geography. The enactment of Federal Law 1FZ, On Electronic Digital
Signatures, in 2002 accelerated the development of Russian e-commerce by
applying legal contract principles to internet transactions (ECommerce Journal
2008
). Digital advertising is dominated by Russia's two largest ISPs, Yandex and
Rambler, which together comprise almost two-thirds of internet advertising rev-
enues. A few stores, such as the Partia chain, introduced virtual showcases by the
mid-1990s, catering primarily to the wealthy; the growth of e-commerce, however,
has steadily democratized its access, and today even some supermarket chains,
such as Sedmoi Kontinent, now offer online ordering (Global Technology Forum
2006
). Quality Foods sells a variety of goods, including groceries, dry cleaning
services, and cinema tickets online. Ozon.ru, which claims to be the most popular
