Question reference: S4W-28315
- Asked by: Gavin Brown, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 5 November 2015
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Current status: Answered by John Swinney on 16 November 2015
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether it can provide a list of the 20 companies in Scotland with the largest e-commerce sales.
Answer
There is no universally accepted definition for e-commerce. For strategic planning purposes, Scottish Enterprise has adopted the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) definition used by the Office for National Statistics and others to define e-commerce. The OECD defines an e-commerce transaction as “the sale or purchase of goods or services, conducted over computer networks by methods specifically designed for the purpose of receiving or placing of orders”. We are not aware of any currently available research that identifies the top 20 companies in Scotland by value of e-commerce sales using this definition.