E-Commerce Data

Students in an entrepreneurship class have been asking for data on web or online sales for particular industry sectors. This data is often hard to find but there are some reports that collect e-commerce data that could be good starting points.

U.S. Census E-Stats Reports
Their E-Commerce Multi-Sector Report breaks out the value of e-commerce sales for industry sectors based on 3 or 4 digit NAICS codes. The data tables cover sectors in wholesale trade, retail trade, selected service industries and various types of electronic shopping and mail order houses (NAICS 4541). This is an annual report that has been published since 1999.

e-Marketer
This publisher is an aggregator of market research reports on all aspects of e-business and online marketing. You can browse all the reports on their website but you will find that although some articles are free, all the market surveys must be purchased. SIBL subscribes to the e-Marketer database.

ClickZ Stats
This website offers data and many articles of the “Top 50” type on various aspects of e-commerce including advertising, demographics, B2B, and retailing. The scope is global so you can find country focused reports here.

IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC)
These reports of about 15 pages come out twice a year and focus on measuring advertising revenue from various internet advertising outlets. The reports do contain data on internet ad revenues for nine major industry categories. These are broadly defined industries including retail, financial services, entertainment and consumer packaged goods.

Students should also search business news databases. Tablebase uses the concept terms "e-commerce" and "electronic commerce" which can be combined with either industry or product categories. Factiva has industry codes for e-commerce, e-business (B2B), and etailing (B2C).