By 2002 consumer e-commerce will increase from $4.5bn to $26.0bn, while business-to-business transactions skyrocket from $15.9bn to $268bn, a new report has found. The study, conducted by e-commerce research firm eMarketer, observes that the net is an ideal platform for business-to- business trading hubs. These hubs are expected to claim the lion’s share of e-commerce revenue for the foreseeable future. However e-commerce has a long way to go before it threatens more traditional methods of retailing goods and services. In 1997, e- commerce was one-tenth the size of the catalog industry, and accounted for only 0.3 per cent of total retail trade in the US. Far from being a ‘level playing field’, internet commerce is dominated by large corporations. Nor are those titanic revenues evenly shared: the top ten per cent of e-commerce outfits account for more than 90 per cent of sales. Fittingly, the report itself is for sale over the internet. Contact Geoffrey Ramsey (gramsey@emarketer.com) for details.
