The role of the internet in foreign trade and the use of internet in the foreign trade activities of the companies in the Gebze Organized Industrial zone

This research has been carried out to determine the extent, in which companies use the internet in their corporate operations and foreign trade transactions, and also to examine the level of utilization of the Internet in terms of corporate functions and foreign trade in terms of the characteristics of the companies (the sector, the countries where they export and import the most, etc.). Questionnaire form which was formed in line with the purpose; and applied to the company managers of 106 companies in the Organized Industrial Zone of Gebze, Kocaeli. SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 22.0 program was used to evaluate the data obtained from the questionnaires. percentage and frequency analysis were used to determine the descriptive characteristics of companies, mean and standard deviation statistics were used to determine the corporate operations and internet usage in foreign trade transactions. T-test, One-way Anova eTst and Scheffe Tests were applied as hypothesis tests. As a result of the research, it has been determined that companies benefit from internet in their corporate operations and foreign trade transactions in high level, but they cannot benefit from the internet in order to take orders and their pricing processes as much as other transactions. It was determined that the levels of Internet usage in corporate operations and foreign trade transactions in terms of the descriptive characteristics of companies were differed. In particular, it is found that companies with less than 1 year of activity, or have foreign trade with fewer countries, or total share of foreign trade in their overall trade have less share of Internet usage. Key words: Foreign trade, import, export, corporate internet use