Naslov
Internet Purchases by Individuals: Clusters of the Most vs the Least Developed European Countries

Autori
Dumičić, Ksenija ; Čeh Časni , Anita ; Žmuk , Berislav

Izvornik
International Journal of Information Technology & Computer Science (2091-1610) 18 (2015), 2; 1-9

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Radovi u časopisima, članak, znanstveni

Ključne riječi
Internet purchases by individuals ; ICT development indicators ; Internet skills ; Internet use ; GDP per capita in PPS ; multiple regression model ; k-means clustering

Sažetak
The goal of the paper is to describe and analyse possible economic and ICT development level impacts on the Internet purchases by individuals, as the main variable under study, in selected European countries, EU28, and three official EU candidates, the Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey. For this purpose, the Eurostat data for the main variable, as the dependent one, and for the additional four independent variables for 2013 are analysed. Considering Internet purchases by individuals, the less developed analysed countries are mostly those being the South East European (SEE) countries. Four independent variables are selected, expressed as economic and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development indicators and they are all shown to be positively correlated with the Internet purchases by individuals in selected European countries. The best fitted multiple linear regression model developed shows that GDP per capita in Purchasing Power Standards (PPS), Index, EU- 28=100, and Percentage of individuals using the Internet, are statistically significant in the regression model. The main research hypothesis was that the SEE countries (SEECs) resemble each other concerning analysed variables, and they might belong to the same cluster. The k- means cluster analysis for 30 countries based on all five variables resulted with an acceptable four cluster solution. The clusters of the less developed, mostly SEE countries, and contain the EU official candidates: the FYR of Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey, but also the following three EU members: Bulgaria, Greece and Romania. The most developed EU countries are gathered in the cluster of their own with 10 countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, United Kingdom, and the Scandinavian countries: the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Sweden.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Ekonomija

Napomena
Rad je objavljen u sklopu projekta: Kratkoročna financijska potpora UNIZG 2014: "Statističko modeliranje determinanti korištenja informacijsko-komunikacijskih tehnologija u europskim zemljama" (Voditeljica: prof. dr. sc. K. Dumičić).

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