Our main focus is on current and potential e-commerce consumers. Infrastructure requirements for supply (distribution and labour) are not dealt with in detail although a brief commentary is provided.

Many organisations are generating analyses of e-commerce, but they are deriving their base statistics from a relatively small number of main sources. Important data emanating from the USA has been covered only very briefly in the belief that European e-commerce will follow a significantly different trajectory.

The main sources of data on UK e-commerce are:

Survey material that is not widely available is included with permission from the survey authors. Academic work on e-commerce is ongoing but due to the nature of the peer review and publication process, much of this work is not yet in the public domain. Despite this, a number of academics have given invaluable assistance and we have been able to obtain a number of unpublished key reports.

Appendices 1 and 2 of the full report that accompanies this document acknowledges in detail all sources used in preparing the two documents.