E-Commerce today is a shape-shifter whose mission is various and evolving, one moment as small and personal as finding a local restaurant, the next as big and corporate as locating a pasta wholesaler for your chain of noodle shops. Thanks to new technologies and rapidly increasing Web access, e-commerce is beginning to pick up speed.
             Last year, very few European retailers were taking orders on the Web, but this year has seen phenomenal growth. One reason is simply that more potential consumers are connected to the Web. On-line access almost doubled in Europe this year. Within five years the Euro e-penetration rate will be more than 50 percent.
             Almost a fifth (18 percent) of companies have launched a product that is only available on the Internet. In addition, nearly three quarters of respondents have, in the last three years, launched a new product or an existing one, using e-commerce technologies.
             Senior directors with responsibilities for e-commerce in 357 European companies were questioned about their use of e-commerce. The research revealed that the gap between the electronically sophisticated companies and "the rest", identified in last year's report, is now narrowing. In the last 12 months, European business has grasped the monumental scale of e-business and e-commerce opportunities. All business leaders now know that they must respond quickly or they will die. Barriers to entry are increasing as the first movers mature. The action is moving from pure e-commerce to the re-engineering of the whole enterprise to e-business.
             Last year's report makes a distinction between "sales attributable to the Internet", where companies use the Internet for marketing purposes but use conventional channels to complete the purchase, and "Internet transactions" where all aspects of the sale, including payment, are concluded over the Internet. Major findings of the year's report include:
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