International trade and e-commerce in the practice of enterprises activity

The article discusses the ability of European Union enterprises to develop international trade and to apply e-commerce technologies for such development. The analysis of economic scientific literature on international trade published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Harvard University Press, Springer, M. E. Sharpe, Routledge, etc. show that 30% of authors (from 0.4 mln. in total) are talking about the development of international trade. 9.4% of these authors mention the role of enterprises in such development. Most of these authors analyse the role of trade enterprises (it is mentioned by 8% of authors), production enterprises (it is mentioned by 6.5% of authors). Also they mention ability of enterprises to develop international trade as well (it is mentioned by 1.3% of authors). The analysis of literature shows that international trade should be understood and analysed from the perspectives of enterprises activity. Therefore, it is important to reveal the ability of enterprises to develop international trade in the current challenging conditions, to evaluate, if enterprises, taking into account the new circumstances, are able to respond and adapt to these challenges adequately. One of the challenges is the application of new technologies in the development of international trade. One of such technologies is e-commerce technologies, supporting development of trade in foreign markets. Under conditions of the application of e-commerce technologies buyers and sellers become less dependent on place. By applying e-commerce technologies both tangible and intangible goods may be realized in foreign markets. Considering enterprises’ ability to develop international trade greater attention must be paid to those, who are located in member states of European Union (EU). Analyse of World trade volumes reveals that the largest part of these volumes is delivered by EU enterprises.The aim of the research is to propose framework that incorporates factors determining the ability of companies to develop international trade. The study presented in the paper contains three different aspects. First, the development of international trade is disclosed from different perspectives, including e-commerce as well. Second, the framework that incorporates factors determining the ability of companies to develop international trade is presented. Third, the application of framework for EU production and trade enterprises is given. The article is based on comparative and multiple criteria analysis. For the suggested framework, a set of criteria and the multiple criteria evaluation method (COPRAS) is used. The proposed approach can be useful for authors who analyse the development of international trade