Footwear Industry Footwear Industry - empirica

Footwear
5 Conclusions
5.1 Business impact
5.1.1 Implications for enterprises
In the footwear industry, ICT and e-business have their main impact in the areas of
production and logistics, where strong efforts are being put on the integration of information
and logistic flows between the footwear enterprises and their business customers.
However, while this holds true as a general conclusion, the concrete e-business activity
and the perceived importance of ICT may differ widely according to the different
experiences that companies are facing.
Perceived overall significance of e-Business
All companies were asked to evaluate the importance of e-business for their operations.
In line with the survey results illustrated in the previous sections, it appears that only
about half of all companies in the footwear sector think that e-business constitutes a
part of how they operate. This percentage is significantly higher in all other sectors
studied (70% in total). The main difference to the other sectors is that large footwear
companies appear to attribute not more importance to e-business than the sectors’
SMEs. 86 The difficult economic situation, and the fact that trading relations in this sector
do not require particularly advanced solutions, account for the cautious attitude of most of
footwear manufacturers towards ICT use.
Exhibit 5-1: Perceived overall importance of e-business for company operations
0 20 40 60 80 100
Total Footwear (EU-10)
14
37
Micro (1-9 empl.)
8
33
Small (10-49 empl.)
13
38
Medium (50-249 empl.)
18
41
Large (250+ empl.)
19
27
All 10 sectors (EU-10)
23
47
"Significant part of how we operate"
"Some part of how we operate"
Base (100%): Companies using computers (excl. "don't know"). N (for sector, EU-10) = 750
Weighting: Totals (for the sector and for all 10 sectors) are weighted by employment and should be read as
"enterprises comprising …% of employment in the sector(s)". Figures for size-bands are in % of enterprises
from the size-band. Questionnaire reference: H1
Source: e-Business W@tch (Survey 2006)
86
This figure however, should be treated cautiously, as the number of observations (N=22) is low.
130