The History and Evolution of E-Commerce

Electronic Commerce, or otherwise commonly known as E-Commerce, is defined as the process of buying, selling or exchanging products, services and information via computer networks ( Turban, 2006 ).

Since the spread of the Internet, a wide variety and amount of trade has grown by leaps and bounds, encouraging inovations such as electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.

With the emergence of the World Wide Web (WWW), e-commerce has become more accessible and affordable, especially for small businesses to gain competitive advantage over the bigger businesses. By providing its user-friendly interface, the Web has significantly altered and improved the way the internet organizes, presents and accesses information.

Over the last 30 years, the meaning of e-commerce has changed significantly. Originally, e-commerce referred to the electronically facilitated commercial transcations introduced in the late 1970s. Techonologies such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) allowed busineeses to send and receive electronic commercial documents, such as electronic purchase orders or electronic invoices. This led to the introduction and growth of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

It took approximately 5 years after the Internet became popular worldwide in 1994, to introduce security protocols and DSL, which allowed continual connection to the Internet. By the end of year 2000, many business companies all throughout the world started offering their services through the Web. Eversince then, the word "e-commerce" has been associated by the world with the ability of purchasing and seeling various goods and services through the Internet using secure protocols and electornic payment services.

Below is the timeline of the summary of the evolution of e-commerce (Wikipedia):

• 1990: Tim Berners-Lee writes the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, using a NeXT computer. - 1992: J.H. Snider and Terra Ziporyn publish Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change The Way We Shop and What We Buy. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312063598.
• 1994: Netscape releases the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Pizza Hut offers pizza ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opens. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. Adult materials also becomes commercially available, as do cars and bikes. Netscape 1.0 is introduced in late 1994 SSL encryption that made transactions secure.
• 1995: Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com and the first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio start broadcasting. Dell and Cisco begin to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay is founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb.
• 1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.
• 1999: Business.com sold for US $7.5 million to eCompanies, which was purchased in 1997 for US $149,000. The peer-to-peer filesharing software Napster launches.
• 2000: The dot-com bust.
• 2002: eBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion. Niche retail companies CSN Stores and NetShops are founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains, rather than a central portal.
• 2003: Amazon.com posts first yearly profit.
• 2007: Business.com acquired by R.H. Donnelley for $345 million.
• 2008: US eCommerce and Online Retail sales projected to reach $204 billion, an increase of 17 percent over 2007.

Clearly, the speed of the evolution and progression of e-commerce is undeniable. Many have benefitted from the usage of e-commerce and have not looked back since. Although with the introduction of this ever advancing technology, unethical and immoral things have also been done, this does not mean that e-commerce is bad. In actual fact, e-commerce is merely a tool. It is up to the users like us, who will decide whether we want to use this techonology for good or bad.

Therefore as a conclusion, I urge everyone who is benefitting from this technology, called the e-commerce, to use this technology wisely for the good of the public. Let us not exploit what is originally intended to be good, and turn it into something that is bad for the public. The future of e-commerce and the impact on the present and future generations lies in our hands...

Links:

1. http://www.klein.com/dvk/publications/ecommerce.pdf
2. http://newmedia.medill.northwestern.edu/courses/nmpspring01/brown/Revstream/history.htm
3. http://ict.cdimm.org/man/engleza/ecomm03.pdf
4. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1282104
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce