NZ e-commerce worth over half a billion

By Phil Boeyen, ShareChat Business News Editor

Wednesday 30th January 2002

A new survey into business practices in New Zealand is shedding light on how the country does business and shows online commerce is worth over $500 million a year.

Statistics New Zealand has released the results of the first Business Practices Survey, conducted in June last year, which is the first economy-wide survey measuring the adoption of various business practices by New Zealand firms. The survey looked at businesses' use of information technology, innovation, and management practices.

According to the data more than a third of New Zealand businesses operate a website, with 30% having product or service information on their website.

10% of businesses have a website with a facility to receive online orders and estimate that they sold $523 million of goods and services online in the year ended June 2001.

That total represents just 0.3% of total operating income, which is in line with a Canadian study in 2000 pegging e-commerce sales at 0.4% of total operating revenue. However the figure is behind e-commerce sales in the US, which in the third quarter of 2001 accounted for 0.9 percent of total sales.

In terms of innovation the survey indicates that 62% of New Zealand businesses have offered new or significantly improved products to their customers in the last three years and half of businesses have invested in machinery and equipment relating to the introduction of new products.

14% of businesses claim they spend more than 10 percent of their total expenditure on innovative activities.

The survey also reveals 68% of New Zealand businesses have a formal planning process, although only 17% set goals for a period longer than two years.

75% of businesses have set procedures for dealing with customer complaints, while 69% have systems for measuring the quality of the products provided by their suppliers.

Kiwi firms also say they keep a reasonably close eye on the competition, with 60% of businesses reporting they closely monitor their competitors' products.

The survey was jointly funded by the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, and Statistics New Zealand.

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