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E-commerce sales hit $1.3 trillion in 2003 Business-to-business transactions represent the largest portion of online sales
If anyone wonders why fraudsters are so interested in the Internet, they need only to consider the huge amount of money that changes hands online. According to data developed by the U.S. Census Bureau and compiled by MarketStance, Middletown, Connecticut, e-commerce sales totaled more than $1.3 trillion in 2003 and, assuming that upward trends continue to accelerate, that figure could skyrocket as increasing numbers of transactions are completed via the Internet. Manufacturing sales represented the largest segment of e-commerce sales at $843 billion, representing 21.2% of total sales, followed by wholesale trade of $387 billion in sales, or 13.1% of total sales. Overall, the $1.3 trillion in sales represents approximately 8.7% of the total sales completed in 2003. The predominance of manufacturing and wholesale transactions indicates that most of the transactions involved business-to-business sales, many of which were probably reorders of items as the Internet has taken over from phone ordering and other less efficient mechanisms. The fact that retail sales totaled only $56 billion, or 1.7% of the total, clearly indicates that there is plenty of room for growth and, unfortunately, plenty of room for fraudsters to take advantage of the unwary. For additional information, contact MarketStance at www.marketstance.com. * |
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