subject: How Media Consumption And Internet Use Patterns Migrate Through Europe? [print this page] Jon Brotherhood Brothermailer 6th March 2012
Media consumption patterns are fairly consistently driven out of the USA and across into UK and northern / central Europe before heading down south. Its a common story, relatively consistently followed throughout western Europe. The UK is seen to be eighteen months to two years behind the USA in media consumption habits. The rest of Europe can be broadly split into three. Northern Europe where the Scandinavians (with their long wintry nights and seemingly highly logical and sensible governments) have the desire and been given the infrastructure at sensible prices to have a significant portion of media consumption and lifestyle / information facilitation to be online. Middle Europe where Germany is always an early adopter as is France, particularly through their history of the minitel system which was like an early basic internet. However, in our 3rd region, souther Europe Spain and Italy seem to be regularly 5 10 years behind. Although this is the case, they are again consistent followers of the trend despite being so much further behind. Why is this?
Well, there are of course many reasons but the main ones include:-
-de-regulation of the telecommunications industry (or lack thereof)
-freedom of the media industries (again or the lack thereof)
-investment in infrastructure to support high speed telecommunications
-cultural and educational change and the pace at which this occurs
-urbanization and dependence of the proportion of the work force on new types of economy vs. more traditional
The importance of leading in innovation and technology cannot be taken seriously enough. With companies and governments colluding to maintain monopolies of important infrastructure which support entrepreneurialism and diversification, the future of southern Europe outside of anything but a holiday destination can look bleak.
Some of the main activities undertaken online such as email, search, retail, research, travel, dating and gaming have often been led out of the USA with EU countries looking to jump on the band wagon in their own industries but having to play catch up.
You only have to look at the major suppliers of technology in search, email marketing, online dating, game playing, online advertising, travel, in fact most online businesses to realize we are very rarely looking to southern Europe for examples of market leading companies. Recently another UK technology company (autonomy) cashed in to a US rival (HP) but these examples are few and far between and EU owned tech companies are dismally low.
In order for Europe, and particularly southern Europe, to have a future in which our descendants can compete on a global scale and manage their own companies and destinies we need to ensure a competitive level playing field, education and competition thrive as well as the government and state owned companies are genuinely geared towards the proliferation of new technologies managed and created by a free market rather than by state. There is a great opportunity at the moment with the final removal of the recent Italian premier Berlusconi and the replacement of Zapatero with far more capitalist focused alternatives who are needed to sort out the economy. Lets hope they do this for the long term including structural reform to get back on the growth bus rather than try and protect some old ways.
BrotherMailer is a technology company operating email marketing services company locally in Spain, the UK and France. We hope to support education, growth and use of new technologies through local companies in order to support local organisations match the sophistication of an increasingly globalized marketplace.
