This report series covers the five leading economies of Western Europe. In part because e-commerce activities cover a variety of sectors, detailed information, even on the largest economies, is hard to come by. While educated estimates can be made for these larger markets, in many other parts of Europe e-commerce is just too small or lacking in data to be able to provide anything reliable. Some coverage of the e-commerce market of smaller European nations can be found in the Mintel report on Home Shopping, Retail Intelligence, 2007.

The subject of this report is e-commerce, and is limited to those items purchased via the Internet. The report therefore includes sales on the Internet by high-street retailers, mail order houses and pureplay Internet retailers.

While our spending figures refer to all B2C commerce via the Internet, the retail sales are a little more restrictive as to what is included. Downloadable music and films are included as part of our e-commerce retail sales. This is based upon the theory that if a consumer enters an outlet of HMV or Fnac, it is not because they want to buy a shiny new disc but the music or film that it contains that interests them.

Conversely sales related to travel, financial services and automobiles have been excluded from retail sales, as these are not included in standard country retail statistics. These areas have been included in our B2C commerce via the Internet (ie spending) figures however.