History and evolution of e-commerce

Electronic Commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as Internet .Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses is referred to as business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer(B2C).B2B can be open to all interested parties or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants.B2C is conducted by companies such as Amazon.com.E-commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the business transactions.There are some common applications related to e-commerce,which is email,entreprise content management,instant messaging,newsgroup, online shopping and online tracking,online banking,online office suites,domestic and international payment system,shopping cart software,teleconferencing and electronic tickets.

The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, e-commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) .These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically.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.The first documented e-commerce purchases were cars. As cars were purchased online in the early 1990s, the technologically savvy person recognized e-Commerce was beginning to refer to the exchange of goods and/or services over the Internet.

Although the Internet became popular worldwide around 1994, it took about five years to introduce security protocols and DSL allowing continual connection to the Internet. By the end of 2000, a lot of European and American business companies offered their services through the World Wide Web. Since then people began to associate a word "e-commerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the Internet using secure protocols and electronic payment services.E- Commerce has become fully evolved as now-a-days it recognized by even average persons. Most business transactions are currently being done via the internet. E-taliers are what people are talking about instead of retailers. Receipts indicating proof of purchase and orders were now being freely exchanged over a wireless network instead of the real paper itself.

More recently, due to the government’s involvement, consumers have felt much more comfortable to share their private information, financial, personal, and banking information over the internet. Now-a-day, many businesses are completely online businesses with no actual ‘brick-and-mortar’ stores.E-commerce has a great deal of advantages over “brick and mortar” stores and mail order catalogs. Consumers can easily search through a large database of products and services. They can see actual prices, build an order over several days and email it as a “wish list” hoping that someone will pay for their selected goods. Customers can compare prices with a click of the mouse and buy the selected product at best prices. E-commerce strategy has become fully evolved that it is now possible to open your own online business and not accrue any overhead such as leasing a studio, fax machines and printers, post-it notes and staplers.

It is a video found by our group about evolution of e-commerce:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW4X3b_j0eE