A Survey of Greek Agricultural E-Markets

Abstract

Abstract The role that information technology plays in today's business activities has led to an increase in firms using and/or deploying e-markets online. This development undoubtedly affects the agri-food sector, since a large number of agricultural firms are demonstrating or are expected to demonstrate e-commerce activities. This paper aims to provide an overview of the current status of agricultural e-markets in Greece, by presenting results from an analysis of 100 cases. Results indicate that Greek e-markets may still have a rather low degree of sophistication, but they demonstrate a strong B2B orientation, as well as an outreach for international customer bases. Keywords: Internet, e-commerce, e-markets, agriculture, agri-food sector, survey Introduction The role that information technology plays in today's business activities has led to the emergence of business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) electronic commerce (e-commerce). According to the 2005 report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2005), e-commerce continues to grow in all business sectors, in terms of higher sales. For instance, the growth rate of retail trades through e-commerce in the United States (the largest global e-commerce market) was significantly higher in 2005 (24.7%) than the growth rate of the total retail trade (4.3%). The share of e-commerce in total retail trade, in terms of online purchases as a percentage of total purchases, is also growing (UNCTAD, 2005). In addition, Eurostat data (http://epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int/) indicate that for the European Union (EU), e-commerce sales over the Internet increased from 0.9% in 2002 to 2.2% in 2004. Compilations by the OECD suggest that online sales represent a small but growing share of total sales in most EU member countries, and that there is solid growth in B2C e-commerce (OECD, 2004). The development of e-commerce undoubtedly affects the agri-food sector (referring to the sector of agricultural products, food, and beverages), which constitutes one of the major business sectors around the world. Related surveys in USA and EU indicate that agricultural firms are changing the way they think about their business structure and functions, by adopting e-commerce practices (Chambers et al., 2001; Mueller, 2001; Strieker et al., 2003; Gelb & Offer, 2005; Mueller et al., 2005). According to recent surveys, a large number of agricultural firms are demonstrating (or are expected to demonstrate) e-commerce activities. These activities most of the times include the use and/or deployment of electronic markets (e-markets). Several researchers have surveyed existing e-markets, aiming to provide an overview of the e-markets of a particular sector (Kollman, 2000), of a particular type (Lenz et al., 2002), or in a particular country (Holzmuller & Schluchter, 2002). On a national level, such surveys allow for the examination of the e-market implementation in various business sectors. In the agri-food sector, there have been several attempts to address such topics from various perspectives and in a number of countries (including the works of: Henderson, 1981; Graham, 1999; Jessen, 2001; Canavari et al., 2003; Stricker et al., 2003; Igual et al., 2003; Petino & Rizzon, 2003; Classen, 2004; Fritz et al., 2004). Only a few related studies have been carried out for e-markets in Greece, such as the survey of B2B Greek e-markets carried out by Poulimenakou et al. (2002). Until today though, there has not been a study focused on the e-markets of the agri-food sector. In this paper, we attempt to provide an overview of the current status of development for the e-markets in Greece that offer agricultural products or aim at agricultural stakeholders, through a focused analysis of 100 existing Greek e-markets. The rest of the paper is structured as it follows. Section 2 provides some background on e-markets and describes the representative types of agricultural ones. …