J.S.S.Y's E-Commerce World

CONCEPT OF E-COMMERCE
What is Electronic Commerce? Electronic commerce or also better known as e-commerce is narrowly defined as buying and selling products or services over the Internet. The concept has been broadened to include all business activities of a sales cycle. In short it embodies the concept of doing business online using the Internet to in an efficient and effective way. Besides that, it is also about letting the customers to control the access to a business's computer system so that they can serve their purchasing needs. The development of e-commerce is largely responsible for many successful names such as Amazon, eBay, Priceline and Expedia, to name a few.

HISTORY OF E-COMMERCE
E-commerce has emerged into a multi-billion dollar industry even before the personal computers prevailed. This industry in fact is the most influential and the fastest growing industry in the world. How did this exactly happened? By looking into the evolution of e-commerce, it would be easier for us to judge the trends of e-commerce in the future. Hence, let's go back in time to see how e-commerce started and evolved till today. The history of e-commerce is actually the history of how Information Technology has transformed business processes. The most popular activity on the Web is shopping. It has much allure in it, it lets you shop at your leisure, anytime, and anywhere. It all started in the late 1970s, when the ability to use electronic technologies such as the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) appeared. This allowed organizations to send commercial documentation electronically. The EDI was standardized through ASCX12 to guarantee that companies would be able to complete transaction reliably with one another in 1984.

In year 1991, e-commerce became possible when the Internet was opened for commercial use. Since then, thousands of businesses have taken up residence at the websites. At first, the term e-commerce meant the process of execution of commercial transactions electronically with the help the EDI and EFT which gave an opportunity for users to exchange business information and do electronic transactions. In 1992, CompuServe offered online retail services to its customers, which gave people the first chance to but things through their computers. In 1994, the Netscape arrived and provided its users a simple browser which can be used to serve the Internet and provided its users a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer. Although the Internet began to advance in popularity among the general public in 1994, it took approximately four years to develop the security protocols like http and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) which allowed rapid access and a persistent connection to the Internet.

Amazon.com, is one of the most famous e-commerce companies and is located in Seattle, Washington (USA). It was founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos and was one of the first American e-commerce companies to sell products over the Internet. Amazon.com was considered as an online bookstore, but in time it extended a variety of goods by adding electronics, software, DVDs, video games, music CDs, MP3s, apparel, footwear, health products and more. In 2000, a great number of business companies in the United States and Western Europe represented their services in the World Wide Web. At this time people began to define the term e-commerce as the process of purchasing of available goods and services over the Internet using secure connections and electronic payment services. Although the dot-com collapse in 2000 led to unfortunate results and many of e-commerce companies disappeared, the “brick and mortar” retailers recognized the advantages of electronic commerce and began to add such capabilities to their web sites.

By the end of 2001, the largest form of e-commerce, Business-to-Business (B2B) model, had around $700 billion in transactions. According to all available data, e-commerce sales continued to grow in the next few years and, by the end of 2007, e-commerce sales accounted for 3.4 percent of total sales. In 2007, Fortune magazine ranked Dell as the 34th-largest company in the Fortune 500 list and 8th on its annual Top 20 list of the most successful and admired companies in the USA in recognition of the company’s business model. In 2008, a research was conducted and the domain name Amazon.com is said that had attracted about 615 million customers every year. The most popular feature of the web site is the review system, which is the ability for visitors to submit their reviews and rate any product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Amazon.com is also well-known for its clear and user-friendly advanced search facility which enables visitors to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the database. History of e-commerce is unthinkable without Amazon or eBAy which are among the first Internet companies that allowed electrinoc transaction. Thanks to its founders that we now have a increadible e-commerce sector and that we get to enjoy the buying and selling advantages of the Internet. Currently there are 5 largest and most famous worldwide Internet retailers: Amazon, Dell, Staples, Office Depot and Hewlett Packard. According to statistics, the most popular categories of products sold in the World Wide Web are music, books, computers, office supplies and other consumer electronics products.

History of e-commerce is a history of a new virtual world which is evolving according to the customer needs and advantage. It is a world which we are all building together brick by brick, laying a secure foundation for the future generations. Efficiency, intelligence and availability are the major benefits of e-commerce. The benefits of e-commerce are the results of digitalization of business information and availability of global network (Internet).

Reference Links:

http://newmedia.medill.nothwestern.edu/courses/nmpspring01/brown/Revstream/history.htm

http://ict.cdimm.org/man/engleza/ecomm03.pdf