Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Evolution of E-Commerce

By Katt DelaCruz

E-Commerce, which stands for Electronic Commerce but is also known as eCommerce, has come a long way since its inception in the late 1970s. Once upon a time, the term e-commerce was used when referring to electronic banking and direct deposit. We now refer to this as EDI, or Electronic Data Interchange. Over time, e-commerce provided for businesses to electronically send invoices and purchase orders. A decade later, e-commerce strategy allowed for credit card numbers to be sent via the Internet as well as the introduction of the ATM (Automated Teller Machine) was socially accepted.

Back in the 1990's the internet was not even half popular as it is today and that meant few people understood how eCommerce went on. To those who society refers to as computer geeks, they understood it to be something that meant doing business online. That means that a virtual supermarket was created. There are records of people buying cars over the internet during this time. It only came to be more familiar to the other group of people after the internet received popularity in 1994.

A major reason for the delay in saturation of the internet globally, is attributed mainly to the lack of government supported that was always questioning the trustworthiness' of commercial transactions via the internet. Around 1994 and1995, security protocols were set thus guaranteed safety in the usage credit card via internet. It was also around this time that there was continuous streaming of through DSL, making it possible to browse, shop and purchase items via the internet. These encouraged the growth of the internet on a global scale.

The growth spurt was after this period where efforts saw the possibility of having to order pizza online was made real, together with the introduction of Mozilla. Amazon and eBay also made an entry into the internet market at around this time.

Gradually over the years, e-Commerce strategy has gone from being known only by the Internet savvy to being fully recognized by the average person. When one heard 'B2B' they eventually recognized that to mean business-to-business and could assume it was referring to the concept of e-Commerce. Retailers became e-tailers and receipts from the purchase of products or services were widely accepted via emails from the seller or provider. Email (Electronic Mail), instant messaging, online shopping and order tracking, domestic and international payment systems, shopping carts, and electronic tickets have all become part of our daily vocabulary. In today's business world, there really is no option to have an internet presence, this is how fully evolved e-commerce has become.

More recently, due to the government's involvement, consumers have begun to feel much more comfortable sharing their private information, financial, personal, and banking information over the internet. And today, many businesses are completely online businesses with no actual 'brick-and-mortar' stores. E-commerce strategy has become so fully evolved that it is now possible to open your own online business and not accrue any overhead such as rent or leasing a studio, fax machines and printers, post-it notes and staplers and with good e-Commerce strategy, you can successfully run your own business online.

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