Bertelsmann Sees Internet Sales Explosion
Friday July 31 2:52 PM EDT
GUETERSLOH, Germany (Reuters) - Internet commerce is set to explode in Germany with
sales likely to surge to $22.60 billion Bertelsmann's multimedia director said today.
Klaus Eierhoff, head of multimedia at the German media giant, wrote in a guest column for
Reuters Advertising and Media Briefing that while about six million Germans are using the Internet
today, the number is growing "exponentially."
"In the coming years, (Internet sales) will grow to about 40 billion D-marks, equivalent to five
percent of German retail revenues or the entire volume of the present mail-order business,"
Eierhoff wrote.
The Internet stands to revolutionize the automotive industry in particular, by offering consumers
what the conventional car dealer often cannot, from virtually unlimited selection to comparisons
between makes, he wrote.
He cited the success the U.S. market had already seen in online car sales, with $1 billion in annual
turnover, as a sign of what Germany could expect.
Eierhoff hailed multimedia's ability to make use of the trend towards one-to-one marketing, in
which customers can have their questions and concerns addressed directly via the Internet or call
centers.
But Germany threatened to hinder the development of the Internet if it continued to hold online
service providers responsible for all content which appeared on their services, he wrote.
A German court in May sentenced the former head of the German unit of online service
CompuServe, Felix Somm, to a two- year suspended sentence for "abusing" the Internet and
allowing child pornography to be accessible via CompuServe.
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