E-commerce in Romania is only in an incipient phase

Romanian companies are still far from exploiting the entire potential of e-commerce, while public utilities and insurance companies are the last to use this field, shows a study drawn by the management consultancy Roland Berger & Partner.

The document is entitled “Success factors in electronic commerce” and was finalised after evaluating the e-commerce activities developed by 66 Romanian companies representative for nine industries, from the automaking sector to tourism.

The authors of the study stress that the only Romanian companies that are using the Internet and the electronic commerce in order to position themselves and to address new market segments are the IT and telecommunications companies. On the other hand, the companies in the other analysed industries use the Internet mainly to provide information and to advertise their products.

Moreover, even the companies that have set off in the adventure of e-commerce fail to fully grasp the entire importance of this field. For instance, the products/services portfolio offered over the Internet is generally smaller than the traditional portfolio. Subsequently, unlike Western states, local sites featuring online trading do not offer significant advantages, e.g. smaller prices, home delivery services, etc.

This fact, together with low circulation of modern payment devices, shows why business-to-consumer commerce is less developed in Romania than electronic business-to-business trading.

The survey goes to show that Romanian companies do not pay enough attention to key-factors that can secure the success of any business in the field of electronic commerce.

For instance, local companies do not know yet how to exploit the benefits of technology partnerships or professional marketing campaigns for web-based businesses. And worse, many managers, mainly in state-owned enterprises, do not understand the benefits of Internet and e-commerce and do not include them in their strategic plans.

According to Roland Berger & Partner, the key success factors in e-commerce are strategic orientation, integration, partnerships, content, features (additional features increase interactivity and customer loyalty) and marketing (professional use of database marketing for customer analysis and personalisation/individualisation of offers).