Overview

In all of the research and studies I found on E-Commerce and E-Business, Sweden was one of the most highly ranked countries in both areas. I believe that the predicted growth rates of B2B and B2C ecommerce are indicative of Sweden continuing to benefit and prosper in the coming years. As of April 2003, "eMarketer predicts that worldwide B2B ecommerce revenues will surpass USD 1.4 trillion by the end of 2003."(21) In addition, according to ePaynews.com (22), B2C ecommerce is likely to exceed USD 133 billion by 2005. A major factor in whether countries will be able to take advantage of the growth in these areas is how prepared they are for IT opportunities, otherwise known as e-readiness.

Sweden is ranked 1 st in e-readiness

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in their April 2003 article, Sweden has overtaken the United States to become the leading nation for e-readiness. The article (21), defines e-readiness as "the extent to which a country's business environment is ready for Internet-based commercial opportunities". They site a major factor in the US 's fall from first place as the recent downturn in the US economy. This has left room for mainly Scandinavian countries to move forward in this area.

E-Commerce

Ecommerce Digest (ECD) performed a study that found that only .68% of retail sales are made online in Sweden, although 27% of internet users are buying online. It is unclear exactly when this study was completed, although it appears to be around 2002 (23). At the time of this study, Sweden was ranked 5 th behind the U.S, Netherlands , the UK and Switzerland . However, just a year later, as mentioned above, Sweden has made it to first place, thus leading me to believe that the percentage of retail sales and general buying online is increasing, and will continue to do so. The table below is an indication of the enormous room for growth in ecommerce both in Sweden and around the world. Even the most highly ranked countries have relatively low percentages of purchasing and paying online.

How Europeans Paid For Online Purchases In The Past Year

Source: Datamonitor , October 2001 http://www.epaynews.com/statistics/purchases.html (22)

E-Business

As one of the fastest adopting IT communities, technology plays a large role in Swedish business. Booze-Allen Hamilton reported in Nov 2002, that the "The citizens of Canada, Sweden and the US are the most involved in ecommerce, while the adoption and use of online technologies to change the way businesses work, is most developed in the US and Sweden." (21) This study was commissioned by the Office of the E-Envoy and based their study on statistical indicators and government policies in Sweden, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and UK.

Top Swedish Portals

There are a large number of Swedish Internet Portals existing today: Everyday.se, which is powered by .Tele2, Evreka.se which is powered by Altavista, Passagen.se which is enhanced by Google, Spray.se, etc. An interesting observation is that although Sweden has a very high rate of English literacy, very few of these search engines/information sites offer the option to view the site in English. Only 1 of the top 6 sites could be read in English if desired. Two other popular portals in Sweden are the Swedish versions of Yahoo and Netscape's Netcenter.