15.7 percent of Spanish citizens used the Internet to make a purchase in the last three months.
Although this rate has almost tripled in the last five years it remains far from the European average.
According to the EAE Business School, the proportion of citizens of the European Union (EU) who have used the internet to purchase products or services over the last three months has increased from 15 percent in 2004 to 28 percent last year. In Spain, over the same period this proportion has risen from 5.5 percent to 15.7 percent.
Of the EU countries the most advanced in the use of electronic commerce are United Kingdom (58%), Norway (54%), Denmark (50%), Netherlands (49%), Luxembourg (46%), Sweden and Germany (45% ) and Finland (37%).
Conversly at the other end of the scale are Romania (2%), Bulgaria (3%), Lithuania (6%), Greece, Italy and Latvia (8%), Hungary (9%) and Portugal (10%).
The main reason given by the Spanish for not shopping via the internet is that they prefer to shop in person in a traditional retail outlet (31% of respondents). Other barriers to the use of electronic commerce are concerns about the safety of the methods of payment (23%) and fear of not receiving the goods or being able to return them.
Of the 8 million Spanish who have shopped online in the last year, nearly half did so in relation to holidays to reserve holiday accommodation (48.1%) or other travel related services (49.9%). Other products that are purchased over the Web are for show tickets (36.4%), sports equipment and clothing (21.5%), books, magazines and newspapers (19.6%), household goods ( 18.1%) and electronic equipment (18%).
Some of the benefits that users see in e-commerce is the availability of a wide variety of products and services (67% of respondents) and lower prices (75.9%), and its usefulness to save time or purchase at any time (72%). there is also the benefit of being able to purchase items not available in the locality where the user lives.
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