An official website of the European Union How do you know?      
European Commission logo
JRC Publications Repository Menu

Geo-blocking in Cross-border e-Commerce in the EU Digital Single Market - Institute for Prospective Technological Studies - Digital Economy Working Paper 2016/04

cover
A cross-border e-commerce Mystery Shopping Survey conducted in 2015, finds that the practice of erecting virtual barriers is still common in cross-border e-commerce within the EU, as it was in 2009. Electrical appliances, electronics and computer games are particularly difficult to buy online from another country. Geo-blocking often takes place at the delivery stage of the online purchase process and less often at the access stage. Larger websites can also block access according to a buyer’s IP address. If countries trading with each other have a common language, geo-blocking will be less probable, while a common border or closeness has no effect. Travel services have a different pattern of geo-blocking from tangible goods, where geo-blocking mainly takes place at the access stage. Price analysis shows that differentiation takes place in all sectors, but is more common in the sectors less affected by geo-blocking.
2016-05-23
European Commission
JRC101438
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC101438,   
Language Citation
NameCountryCityType
Datasets
IDTitlePublic URL
Dataset collections
IDAcronymTitlePublic URL
Scripts / source codes
DescriptionPublic URL
Additional supporting files
File nameDescriptionFile type 
Show metadata record  Copy citation url to clipboard  Download BibTeX
Items published in the JRC Publications Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. Additional information: https://ec.europa.eu/info/legal-notice_en#copyright-notice