e-Christmas: seeding Europe's electronic commerce market

When e-Christmas went online in early November, a new Web site sprang up just in time for the 1997 Christmas shopping season. Offering a variety of goods from more than 100 stores in nine European countries, the site makes shopping easy by supporting a variety of European languages and currencies. For Christmas 1997, anyone could shop electronically and have gifts delivered anywhere around the globe. The author considers how this site's real significance was in the attempt by some of electronic commerce's main movers and shakers to seed the European market.