Today with the global economy in such disarray, the ecommerce trends are still growing at an increasing rate. Although the patterns are sporadic the potential for continued expansion in the ecommerce sector of the business world is vast. In many cases these companies are experienced in various international economical situations. But in some cases the transition into different target markets is very difficult. The Internet is one such recent IT breakthrough that is taking place worldwide, and today more than 25,000 people gain Internet access every hour. This growth offers great opportunities and great challenges for existing businesses and potential customers. According to statistics northern European countries have the highest e-commerce penetration ratio, but the three largest traditional markets are the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Internet penetration continues to climb in Europe, and with its head start in wireless communications future prospects for e-commerce look bright while in some of the other European countries ecommerce is facing some really tough challenges. Some of the challenges have proven to be either make or break for some retailer but in many other cases it has been a source of new businesses expanding their customer base. These challenges extend to every facet of the ecommerce industry and a few of them are for example:

Technical support call centers have set up offices here in Bulgaria to work with the customer base in the U.S. and Canada, set their work schedules to correspond with the work hours in the different time zones of the U.S. so they can have customer support when needed. This means that there are many people working the night shift. This alone has its limits; in Bulgaria for example there is a distinct division in the labor laws between the hours of the day shift and night shift. This in turn causes a pay structure difference, and time off period after working the night shift.

These companies have set up offices in various parts of Europe to cut the costs of marketing and distributing their product or services. Utilizing the skilled labor force they have to carefully employ those with the multiple language skill sets for their particular target markets. Many take advantage of those with the English language skill due to the global use of the language. And retaining people with a higher proficiency in the English language can be another problem due to the pay scales in the industry in some areas. This can present issues due to the wide variation of how the language is taught. With ecommerce comes the online Payment Service Provider (PSP). In order to take advantage of the growing market, the PSP’s have to gather the same skills as the other parts of the ecommerce community. Although the European market is growing at a faster pace than other parts of the world, there are some countries that are still reliant on the cash based trade system. Credit and debit cards are not widely used in some of these countries, so the ecommerce industry is a bit slower to take a foothold into the retail system.

One of the more prominent issues facing not just the PSP but also the merchants them selves is the various currencies that have to be utilized in order to expand their consumer base. Until the European Union unifies the currencies there are several that a merchant has to arrange through their banks in order to accept the purchases.