Taiwan's business-to-customer (B2C) electronic commerce is still at its embryonic stage, according to a survey showing that only 18.26 percent of the nation's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have ever carried out business transactions on the Net.
The survey, which polled 21,000 local SMEs on their e-commerce infrastructure during Sept. 15 to Oct. 9, found that although 81.34 percent of companies said they have company Web sites, only 56.06 percent of them felt a need to do business via the Internet.
"The success of the B2C sector in the US does not apply to Taiwan, as consumers here can easily shop for anything they want in their neighborhoods," said Yang Jiann-min (楊建民), an information management professor at National Chengchi University at a forum yesterday.
"Most of the companies use the Internet as a marketing tool or a medium for contacting customers," Yang said.
According to the poll, 43.43 percent of all SMEs said the Internet helps them reach more potential customers, 42.98 percent consider it a tool to enhance their company's image.
Of the respondents to the survey, only 29.02 percent use it to conduct communications and procurement processes with other companies.
One company admitted that the Internet improves internal efficiency and helps the company reach its customers better, but it had not yet boosted sales figures.
"We found out that most customers use our Web site to learn more about products they need, and then get the products from the neighborhood video-rental store," Juan Chih-cheng (
When commenting on the disparity between the acknowledgement of the importance of B2C e-commerce and actual e-commerce practices, Gary Gong (
"In the dotcom era, companies realized that doing business via electronic means was a growing trend, but failed to consider if the model was really appropriate for their business," Gong said.
One example he cited was a B2C project launched on Tuesday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which built an e-commerce platform for traditional market vendors that enables customers to do their grocery shopping online.
The project, however, is generally not welcomed by shoppers.
"I'd rather go to the market to pick the freshest vegetables or fish by myself," said Helen Kao (
Kao usually shops at a traditional marketplace in her neighborhood, only a 3-minute walk from her house.
The survey also showed that most SMEs have comparatively weak resources and manpower for maintaining their e-commerce system, which is the main obstacle in developing the B2C sector.
But Gong said this does not mean that B2C is doomed to fail here.
"If consumers' shopping habits change over time and create a considerable demand for online business, I believe these companies will be able to react in a short period of time, as 98.57 percent of companies have basic Internet infrastructure for now," Gong said.
The survey was conducted by the Chinese-language TechVantage Magazine (e
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts