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Europe firms savvy on Net
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May 17, 1999: 1:37 p.m. ET
Survey: Major European companies score best for Net performance
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LONDON (CNNfn) - Major European corporations are holding their own against their American counterparts in the e-commerce revolution, according to a British survey to determine which corporations use the Internet best.
The study, commissioned by U.S. software maker Novell and conducted by the London School of Economics, awarded the top three spots and six out of the first ten positions to European companies. The top spot went to the German airline Lufthansa, followed by U.K. supermarket company Tesco and British Telecommunications.
The only U.S. company to make it into the top five was computer maker IBM (IBM), which came in fourth, ahead of British Airways.
One of the report's authors, Richard Evans, said the audit was carried out as objectively as possible and used about 70 elements to allot scores, which were given as a percentage of how much of the site met all the criteria.
The elements were broken down into seven areas, ranging from the basics such as the type of information provided about the company to more advanced features such as on-line payment.
The criteria used by the London School of Economics excluded some of the companies that are at the cutting edge of e-commerce development, such as the online bookstore Amazon.com (AMZN).
Evans said the absence of companies such as Amazon.com was due to the criteria used for the study, and that a future study will include high-growth companies that are doing business online exclusively.
The survey was limited to the top 15 companies in terms of revenue across eight sectors: automobile manufacturing, electronics and information technology, finance, media, pharmaceuticals, retail, travel and transport and telecoms and utilities.
The survey assessed 120 Web sites, mainly drawn from Fortune 500 companies, with the audit designed to mimic all the stages of real online business transactions.
The study also discovered a fast acceptance of e-commerce. "A presence on the [web] is no longer a gimmick; 36 percent of the companies surveyed now offer some form of e-commerce on their corporate websites, up from just 15 percent last year," the LSE said in a statement.
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