Business to business (B2B) e-commerce in Australia and New Zealand is lagging behind business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce and the rest of the world, according to a new report.
The research report, ‘State of E-commerce in Australia and New Zealand’, which was conducted by e-commerce software company, Hyrbis, and in conjunction with Econsultancy, also found that less than half of B2B organisations surveyed plan to increase their investment in e-commerce technology in the next 12 months, compared to around two thirds of organisations that focus solely on B2C.
Domestic B2C e-commerce sites in Australia and New Zealand are increasing at a significant rate and it’s now becoming widely acknowledged that a market which has historically been berated to be slow to adopt, is now coming to the forefront and surging into a new era of maturity.
The report also found that only 14 per cent of companies agree that showrooming is a threat to retail in Australia.
Nearly two thirds of company respondents and more than three quarters of agency respondents indicated that they (or their clients) would be increasing investment in e-commerce technology. On average, client-ide respondents indicated they are planning to increase spend by 41 per cent from current levels.
Sixty nine per cent of company respondents and 86 per cent of agency respondents said their investment will be on mobile optimised transactional websites.
On the B2B side, according to research referenced in the report, only 10 per cent of manufacturing and wholesale distribution businesses have transactional websites.
“We hear so much about B2C commerce but there is a huge opportunity for businesses to use e-commerce to get closer to their customers. This is the first report of its kind which shows there is so much potential for companies to use B2B commerce in Australia and New Zealand to increase competitiveness and improve the bottom line,” said Graham Jackson, senior VP for APJ, Hybris.
The report found that there is some resistance to e-commerce in the region, with 59 per cent of company respondents and 54 per cent of agency respondents saying that lack of budget and resources prevented them from growing their e-commerce business as fast as they would like.
The research conducted between February and March 2014 included nearly 200 respondents, with 87 per cent of respondents from Australia and 13 per cent from New Zealand.
Of these 61 per cent were client side (brand, retailer, publisher etc.) and 39 per cent supply side (agency, vendor, consultant).
Overall 51 per cent of those that took part are retailers and 11 per cent of company respondents operate with annual turnovers of more than $1 billion.
