ABSTRACT
Civilizational progress has its advantages and disadvantages. Its positive aspects include the achievements of science and technology, which make it possible to improve the quality of life, provide an opportunity for developing new solutions in medicine, or allow for the broadening of horizons. However, there are also negative effects of progress. New solutions are not always favourable to human beings; they can even constitute a source of new threats to mental and physical health of individuals and lead to catastrophes and natural disasters or destruction of natural resources and other undesirable civilizational effects.
In economic research we focus in particular on how and to what extent technological progress contributes to the growth of individual European economies. In the post-pandemic era, it is worth discussing the development of the e-commerce sector, whose diverse range of retail and service offerings has been, for many citizens around the world, the only way to purchase essential products or deal with important official matters. There is also no doubt that it was the COVID-19 pandemic that contributed to a decisive acceleration in the growth of this sector in many European countries. During this time, the turnover of companies from online sales showed previously unrecorded increases. All this would not have been possible if it had not been for widespread access to advanced digital solutions. Therefore, the main objective of this chapter is to assess the relationship between the level of innovation of European countries and the development of the e-commerce sector between 2019 and 2021.
The chapter uses data on 22 innovation determinants and eight e-commerce indicators. A study using cluster analysis showed that e-commerce is steadily gaining importance in individual European countries, with the development of this sector coexisting with increasing levels of innovation. The level of innovation of individual countries in Europe is also increasing. The development of the e-commerce sector is most noticeable in those countries that registered the highest values of the analysed indicators in the initial period (i.e., 2019).
