Sated on virtual alphabet soup
With major corporations and technology incubators rushing to hatch a multitude of electronic commerce web sites in Poland, one wonders just how realistic their plans are. Propped up by their own financial resources or by equity from venture capital firms, these internet wunderkinder want everyone to know they have arrived to offer their soon to be in demand services to Poles eager to make online purchases. Both big firms and small start-ups are undaunted by the prospect of charting the country's still unknown e-commerce territory, asserting that they will succeed with their plans whereas others will fall on their faces.
Pity the poor 39 million Poles who have to listen to the perpetrators of these grandiose schemes, who sprinkle their empty jargon throughout articles and TV reports in the form of "alphabet soup:" e-tailing, B2B e-commerce, B2C e-commerce, m-commerce. But when asked about their e-commerce plans, their responses are always the same: "Er, we're still developing them right now so we can't discuss them."
E-commerce is still a venture into the great unknown here, yet all e-commerce pioneers or "ec-pioneers" in alphabet soupese squawk of building online empires without addressing the realities of internet usage in Poland and the obstacles preventing the development of e-commerce.
A recent poll by CASE Consumer Attitudes & Social Enquiry, a Warsaw-based marketing research firm, indicated only 15% of adult Poles have access to the internet. That's not to say all those who have access do go online, but that they merely have the ability to surf the net if they wish. In a random sample of 1,000 people age 18 and above, CASE found that Poles rarely use the internet: only 10% of adults with access to the internet uses it every day, while more than 50% of those with access to the internet uses it less than once a month. The report also noted that in the last six months of 1999, only 3% of active internet users in Poland made an online purchase.
Among the barriers to e-commerce are low credit-card ownership and usage, pricy computers, fear of giving financial data over the net, lack of regulations for authorizing electronic signatures, telecom lines ill-suited for speedy internet connections and data transmission, high costs of metered internet access via phone lines, and an unreliable postal system for the delivery of goods purchased on the net. Ec-pioneers also fail to acknowledge that Polish shoppers are still touchy-feely. They want to get up close and personal with an item before plunking down money, not just zap it from a screen.
Many ec-pioneers have hailed the advent of wireless application protocol (WAP) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) as alternative means of delivering online data for mobile commerce, replacing the computer terminal and keyboard setup. But how many Poles will opt for more expensive mobiles with miniature screens and tiny toggle buttons to access a handful of special WAP-compatible sites?
Prophecies of a coming e-commerce revolution conceal issues that must be resolved before the groundwork for a thriving online purchasing environment can be laid. For now, Poles don't have an appetite for e-commerce. They have already been force fed too many servings of alphabet soup.
