from an Internet caf or something similar. 1.96% access the Internet from some where else. However, only 1.1% of Italian families (216,000) have an Internet connection at home as compared to 16.7% (40 million) in the USA. We have rated this factor an 8 (favorable). The reason for this is because of the large percentage of people who access the Internet from home.SAFETYAt this time, 19% of Italians believe e-commerce is unsafe. 24% feel that there is nothing on the net that interests them. And 16% prefers to deal with people face to face. Because of this, European businesses have been hesitant to go into e-commerce and advertising. I have rated this factor a 6 (neither favorable nor unfavorable). This is because the information on e-commerce has no overbearing importance to Philips Web TV. SEGMENTSWe found three major segments: e-commerce, Internet browsing, and e-mail capabilities. Studies show that Italians currently are on the Internet mainly to browse. However, there is e-mail and e-commerce. I have rated this factor an 8 (favorable). The main reasons for the neutral rating are the lack of information on this topic and the direction the Internet will go in the near future. E-COMMERCEMost of the e-commerce done by the Italians is off U.S. sites. However, this is changing as Italian companies are becoming more and more interested in the Internet. By May 1998, 128,000 Italians had made an online purchase. The most frequently purchased items were software (25%), books and CDs (21%), gifts (12%), computer hardware (10%). Products growing rapidly are airline tickets (6%), show reservations (5%), and financial services (4%). We have rated this factor a 4 (threatening). The data that appears most threatening is the high percentage of computer related items purchased over the web. This shows that many of the current Internet users who use e-commerce are loyal to computers. E-MAILBROWSINGThe overall sociocultural aspect ...
