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Web not important to majority of retail & hospitality business in Devon
DT
According the 2008 Devon ICT Benchmarking Research, just one fifth of Devon SMEs in the retail & hospitality sector said that e-business was either 'essential' or 'very important' to their business.
The interviews the report is based on also contained attitudinal questions to compliment the "hard" information that was collected about computer and ICT technology ownership and usage. These concerned their perception of the importance of e-business:
"How important do you consider E-business is to the current needs of your business or organisation? (By 'E-business' I mean the use of Internet technologies such as e-mail, the Internet, Intranets or Extranets). Would you say it is essential, very important, important, not important or not at all important?"
It is worth noting that the figures for the retail & hospitality sector SMEs in Devon were significantly different from those found elsewhere. Just one fifth of Devon SMEs in the sector (21%) said that e-business was either "essential" or "very important", compared with a third of retail & hospitality SMEs elsewhere in the South West.
The most common reason given for non-adoption was that the Internet was "not relevant" to their business.