Business use of the World Wide Web in New Zealand

Abstract

The World Wide Web is a key component of an e-commerce venture and its popularity in New Zealand is growing rapidly. Despite the importance of the Web for businesses, few studies have been made of how New Zealand businesses use the Web. To this end, this study reports the results from a survey research of 180 New Zealand businesses on the Web undertaken during the period between August 2000 and August 2001. The number of different New Zealand industries represented on the Web shows the great diversity of New Zealand businesses making use of the Web. The number of business sites is increasing rapidly with the vast majority of them being owned by very small businesses. The small size of a typical New Zealand business, however, does not seem to affect its ability to create and maintain a quality business site. The businesses made heavy use of Web-based e-mail applications and developed Web sites mostly for advertising, marketing, and customer support. Web sites with facilities for online transactions were rare and security was generally perceived as the biggest huddle hindering e-commerce. The low level of sophistication of most of the Web sites examined suggests that the potential of the Web may not have been fully realised by New Zealand businesses. There seems to be a lack of effort to fully integrate one's Web activities into one's core business practices.