eMarketer: E-Comerce Sales in Europe

Came across a chart from eMarketer about the distribution of e-commerce in Europe mentioned in the article: The UK Internet Boom:

E-Commerce Sales Distribution Europe 2006-2011

This is a very interesting find. I would not expect the UK to be this far ahead in Internet sales. Also if you take the size of e.g. UK vs Germany into consideration. To underline their numbers eMarketer says in the article mentioned above:

“A long tradition of catalog and mail-order shopping has contributed to the practice of online buying in the UK,” says Ms. von Abrams.

Is this why so many companies from the US pick the UK as their first “destination” in Europe (besides the language, of course…)? Or is it the other way round, that UK is “exposed” to have more Online shopping choices due to the fact, that there is no language barrier which stops them from ordering on US Internet e-commerce sites?

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