Flash Eurobarometer 413 (Companies Engaged in Online Activities)

Companies’ attitudes towards online activities.<br>Topics: company sells or purchases online and / or uses Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) type transactions; online selling of products or services using: own website or apps, small commercial platform, large commercial platform, EDI type transactions; percentage of the company´s online sales in 2014 coming from: country where company is located, other EU countries, countries outside the EU; countries in which online selling was available in 2014; percentage of the company´s non-online sales in 2014 coming from: country where company is located, other EU countries, countries outside the EU; considerations or attempts to sell online in other EU countries; companies already practicing online selling were asked: significance of each of the following difficulties regarding online selling to other EU countries: high delivery costs, expensiveness of guarantees and returns, ignorance of the applicable rules, insufficient security of payments from other countries, copyright reasons, complicated or costly foreign taxation, necessity to adapt product labeling, lack of language skills, restriction or interdiction by suppliers to sell abroad, interdiction by suppliers to use third platform for selling, request of suppliers to sell abroad at different prices, data protection issues, insufficient interoperability, specificity of products, slow internet connection of company or of customers, costs from resolving complaints and disputes cross-border; companies not yet practicing online selling were asked: significance of each of the following difficulties regarding online selling: lack of necessary digital skills, ignorance of the applicable rules, high delivery costs, expensiveness of guarantees and returns, restriction or interdiction by suppliers to sell online, higher prices imposed by suppliers for products sold online, interdiction by suppliers to use third platform for selling, risk of reduction in price for products sold online, risk of damaging image of company and trademarks, slow internet connection of the company.

Demography: information about the company: number of employees, year of establishment, independent or part of national or international group, kind of sold products or services and target group; total turnover in 2014; development of turnover since January 2012; percentage of the value of sales in 2014 coming from online sales; percentage of the value of goods and services purchased online by the company in 2014.

Additionally coded was: respondent ID; country; NACE-Code; company size; preferred language of the interview; nation group; weighting factor.