Monday, February 2, 2009

History and Evolution of E-commerce


Electronic commerce (EC) describes the manner in which transactions take place over networks, mostly the Internet. It is the process of electronically buying and selling goods, services and information. Certain E-commerce applications such as buying and selling stocks and airline tickets on the internet has grown rapidly result in exceeding non-Internet trades.

E-commerce is not just about buying and selling but also the process of electronically communicating, collaborating, and discovering information .It is about e-learning, e-government and social networks. Furthermore, EC-commerce provides impacts on significant portion of the world such as affecting businesses, professions and people.

Development of E-commerce applications started in the early 1970s with the introduction of electronic funds transfer (EFT), which refers to the computer-based systems that is used to perform financial transactions electronically. However, these applications are limited to financial institutes and large corporations.

Electronic data interchange (EDI) was then developed in the late 1970s in order to improve the limitation of electronic funds transfer. Electronic data interchange enlarged the pool of participating company from manufacturers, retailers, services, and others. These systems were then called Inter-organizational System (IOS).An Inter-organizational System (IOS) allows the flow of information to be automated between organizations to reach a desired supply-chain management system, which enables the development of competitive organizations.

From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.
E-commerce has begun before personal computers were prevalent and well known in the world.
As time goes by, it has eventually grown into multi-billion industry. Following are the examples of evolution of E-commerce:

In the year 1984, EDI which is electronic data interchange, was standardized through ASC X12. This guarantees that companies would be able to complete transactions with one another reliably.

In the year 1992, CompuServe offers online retail products to its customers. This gives people the first chance to buy things through their computer.

In the year 1994, arrival of Netscape has provided users a simple browser to surf the Internet and a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer.

In the year 1995, two of the biggest names in e-commerce are launched such as Amazon.com and eBay.com.

In the year 1998, DSL which is Digital Subscriber Line provides fast Internet service to subscribers across California. This prompts people to spend more time and money through online.

In the year 1999, retail spending over the Internet reached $20 billion according to Business.com.

In the year 2000, the U.S government has extended the moratorium on Internet taxes until at least year 2005.

The term electronic commerce was coined in the early of year 1990s when Internet became commercialized and users began flocking to participate in the World Wide Web. E-commerce applications were then rapidly expanded.

E-commerce is possibly introduced from the Telephone Exchange Office. The earliest example of many-to-many EC in physical goods was the Boston Computer Exchange where is a marketplace for used computers that launched in year 1982. The first online information marketplace which including online consulting was likely the American Information Exchange.
http://ict.cdimm.org/man/engleza/ecomm03.pdf
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles6/world-wide-web-evolution.htm



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