MARINAS Y ASTILLEROS PARA YATES Y BOTES

II.1.1.1 Definition of e-commerce

OECD defines an e-commerce transaction as “the sale or purchase of goods or services, conducted over computer networks by methods specifically designed for the purpose of receiving or placing of orders. The goods or services are ordered by those methods, but the payment and the ultimate delivery of the goods or services do not have to be conducted online. An e-commerce transaction can be between enterprises, households, individuals, governments, and other public or private organizations” (OECD, 2011). It includes various forms according to the parties involving in the transactions: B2B, B2C, B2G (business to government) and C2C, etc. We concentrate here in the business-to-consumer model.

Global B2C e-commerce sales have increased sharply over the last decade, driven by a growing online population and changes in consumer behaviours. In 2015, global B2C e- commerce turnover has reached $2.3 trillion US dollars for goods (62%) and services (38%), which represents 3.11% of global GDP. China was the world’s largest e-commerce market which accounted for 33.7% of global e-commerce turnover, following by the United States (26.2%), the United Kingdom (7.7%) and Japan (5%) (Source: Ecommerce Foundation,Global B2C E-commerce Report 2016).

In Europe, overall e-commerce turnover of the EU28 plus 19 European countries34 _amounted

to €455 billion (2.59% of European GDP) in 2015, of which 52% were from goods and 48% were from services (Figure II.1). Online retail is highly concentraed in Europe, with 62% of the sales are generated in three countries – UK (31%), France (14%) and Germany (13%). UK is undoubtable the leader of e-commerce in Europe (Source: Ecommerce Foundation, 2016).

34 _{These are : Albania, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, Servia, Turkey, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo,}

Iceland, Andorra, Belarus, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Norway, Russia, San Marion, Switzerland, Ukraine, Vatican City

75

Figure II.1. Key B2C E-commerce Data of Goods & Services, Europe Source: Ecommerce Foundation, 2016

In Europe, regardless of their size, the penetration of e-commerce among firms with 10 or more employees in the EU28 progresses. Tables II.1 and II.235 _{show thatin 2015, 20% of}

European firms have sold online. In Ireland, Denmark Germany and Sweden, more than a quarter of firms were involved e-commerce. In total, e-sales represented 16% of total annual turnover of European firms.

Table II.1 E-sales and turnover from e-sales, by size class, 2011 to 2015, EU28 (% enterprises, % total turnover)

Table II.2 E-sales, 2015 (% enterprises)

Source: Eurostat, 2016

35 _{Eurostat, E-commerce statistics. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/E-}

76

II.1.1.2 Actors and structures of e-commerce

E-commerce does not necessarily imply the removal of physical stores, but rather an evolution of how retailers fulfil orders. E-commerce has therefore led to an increase in innovative combinations of physical and digital solutions through concepts such as click-and- collect and other collection methods (Ericsson, 2014). We can distinct the pure players and multichannel retailing:

 Pure players are online selling platforms.

These include online retailers such as Amazon, Cdiscount, Zalando, Wanimo, Zooplus or online market places between sellers/buyers such as eBay, Priceminister, Amazon Marketplace, Le Bon Coin.

Some of these pure players are generalists (Amazon, Cdiscount) and some of them are specialized on one specific sector such as Zalando on garment, Wanimo and Zooplus on pet goods.

 Multichannel retailers are mostly physical shops known as brick-and-mortar.

These are traditional businesses such as Carrefour, Auchan, Walmart launching online services in order to catch the share of e-retail market or to test the market before launching a physical shop (such as Tesco before it entered the US market).

However, the distinction between pureplayers and brick-and-mortars is blurring as more and more companies adopt omni-channel distribution strategy.

II.1.1.3 E-commerce logistics and delivery

E-commerce has changed the conventional process of how goods are moved from the seller to the customer. The e-fulfilment process is composed of several steps including inventory management, order fulfilment, shipments, customer enquires and returns. The goods purchased online are in most case delivered by a logistic operator through different ways (home delivery, pick and collect, etc.) that we will study later in this report. The delivery service providers are diversified with most of the e-tailers use at least two subcontratctors (Figure II.2).

Figure II.2: Number of parcel delivery providers used by e-tailers

Source: Accenture, 2016, Differentiating Delivery: How to Win theeCommmerce Battle

The growing number of actors in the e-commerce logistics chain raise the concern on the change of urban logistics practice and the freight flows generated by the growth of e- commerce in particular in urban areas.

77

II.1.1.4 The specificity of e-grocery

In the e-retail market, e-grocery represents a special issue due to the specific conditions of storage and handling of fresh and cold foods and the high costs of home delivery. In contrast to the average general merchandise order, which comprises from one to three separate items, the online grocery orders can contain dozens of items, many of which are low value, perishable and in need of rapid picking and delivery. In the case of on-line purchased goods provided by existing store-based grocery retailers, in which there are no existing physical distribution channels for home delivery operations, these companies have to decide where to locate storage, order processing, picking and delivery activities. As the online business grows, they tend to switch the shelf-picking model to the dedicated picking model which offers potential for efficiency gains but needs a high sales volume to cover the higher investment costs (DG Move, 2012).Indeed, the profitability of e-grocery is a major issue. In France, the only currently existing model of e-grocery is clicks-and-mortar.36