e-Commerce and firm performance : an assessment using multiple survey sources and linked data

The purpose of the research is to investigate how far data collected in Eurostat based surveys on the information society (the enterprise e-commerce survey) can be linked with those on structural business statistics (the annual business inquiry for the UK) and on innovation (the community innovation survey) to develop methodologies and deliver conclusions on the economic impact of e-commerce. In doing this, we have analysed the scope for linking between the various surveys, and the possible value of other sources for this type of work ; practical possibilities for obtaining statistically valid results from linked data ; conclusions from structural business statistics on productivity, using qualitative questions, and the implications these appear to have for pricing ; feasibility of analysing effects of electronic business processes on logistics (as measured by stocks) using e-commerce questions linked to structural business statistics in the retail sector ; possible models for electronic business processes to impact on innovation outputs.