Ict, e-business and Small and Medium Enterprises

III. 

ICT AND E-BUSINESS USE BY SECTOR 

Application and use of ICTs and e-business strategies vary widely across sectors. The following 

section examines tourism, retail, textiles, and automobiles to illustrate sectoral differences in e-business 

and Internet strategies. Internet e-commerce can enable businesses to reach a wider and possibly more 

targeted range of customers either locally or globally, either in B2B transactions (automobiles, textiles) or 

B2C transactions (textiles, tourism, parts of retail and finance e.g. banking, insurance, on-line brokerage). 

When firms perceive a higher level of market opportunities, they commit more resources to ICTs and e-

business where this is appropriate. 

Cross-sector surveys show that there are some differences in the use of the Internet by SMEs 

across different sectors. In Europe, only around a third of SMEs receive orders over the Internet. Their 

most common use of the Internet is for distribution of product/service information (Figure 15). A slightly 

higher percentage of firms in manufacturing, wholesale and business services receive orders over the Web 

than those in retail and construction. Some SMEs send order confirmations via the Internet, although it is 

not clear how many of these orders were received over the Web rather than through other means, such as 

fax or telephone.