ICT and e-business in the tourism industry ICT adoption ... - empirica

Tourism
Annex II: Expanded Tables – Data by Country
General remarks on country data break-downs
The studies of e-Business W@tch have a sectoral perspective and focus, within sectors,
on small and medium-sized enterprises; the analysis of geographic differences is not in
the foreground. This decision on the study focus recognises that the e-business activities
of a company are mainly determined by its business activity, the configuration of its value
system and its size, rather than by the location of a firm.
For several reasons, country data on e-business adoption must be taken with a pinch of
salt. They can reflect, at least to some extent, the structure of the economy rather than
the overall e-maturity of firms. In Italy, for example, sectors dominated by small firms are
much more prevalent than in other countries. Since large firms are more advanced in
electronic business, aggregated data may point at a lower level of e-business activity in
Italy. In contrast to Italy, the relative performance of French and Dutch companies is
significantly better if the emphasis is on larger firms. These benchmarking results suggest
that the digital divide between small and large firms could be quite pronounced in these
countries.
It should also be considered that the average size of the companies interviewed in a
sector can differ by country, depending on industry structure and the available business
directories used for sampling. It cannot be excluded that some directories may have a
bias towards smaller / larger firms. Although this effect is counteracted by weighting the
answers (according to the representation of various company sizes in the population), it
cannot be excluded that structural differences in the sample have an impact on results.
Ideally, comparisons between different countries should only be made within the same
size-band of firms, rather than on the aggregate level. However, at least within a given
sector, the number of observations available does not allow a break-down by country and
size-band.
185