Before the term electronic commerce (or e-commerce) comes into picture, people including firms are engaged in buying and selling activities manually. For example, the seller of a product must identify customer demand for a product; promote their products and some other basic activities. These activities are known as traditional commerce.
Nonetheless, due to the advancement of technology nowadays, E-commerce becomes common and successfully replaces the activities found in traditional commerce. To many people, the term e-commerce means shopping on the part of the Internet or World Wide Web (www). However, the meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce means the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). EDI is a set of standards developed in the 1960’s to exchange business information and to do electronic transactions. These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. Firms such as General Electric and Wal-Mart have been pioneers in using EDI to improve their purchasing processes and their relationships with suppliers. E-commerce development is an efficient way of promoting businesses, bringing in profits and delivering better services.
In additions, E-Commerce provides a rich online transaction experience. There are varieties type of electronic commerce conducted over web. But the largest electronic commerce today is Business-to-Business (B2B). Businesses involved in B2B sell their goods to other businesses. In 2001, this form of e-commerce had around $700 billion in transactions. The other type includes Business-to-consumer (B2C) and Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C). In year 2000, the term e-commerce was defined as a process of purchasing of available goods and services over the internet using secure connection and electronic payment services to overcome the security problem.
As a conclusion, e-commerce became so crucial neither to firms nor to public at large. Nevertheless, e-commerce still need to undergo certain improvement in order to enhance web users confidence and security of data.
References:
1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce
2.http://www.flysyk02.netfirms.com/Ecommerce/History.htm
3.http://www.mapsofworld.com/referrals/internet/internet-history/history-of-e-%20commerce.html
4.http://www.ecommerce-land.com/web_development.html
1 comments:
I totally agree with what you said. Although the online transactions are familiar nowadays and many companies have use it to do business, but there still have things , like security and customer privacy, that always need to improve or update!
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