The history of e-commerce
Buying and selling products over the internet and other computer networks is referred to as e-commerce. With the spread and rapid technological advance associated with the internet the volume of e-commerce has also grown substantially. While most transaction on the internet are conducted for the transfer and exchange or commodities there also exists a market where virtual commodities are sold such as access to content on a website, use of certain hardware etc.
The term e-commerce has evolved significantly for the past 30 years and has come to involve many more things. In the 1970s e-commerce referred to the electronic transfer of documents such as purchase orders and invoices and later on encompassed the facilities of credit cards and telephone banking.
Soon after the popular inception of the World Wide Web in 1994 dealings over the internet began after certain necessary security protocols came into place. The boom in e-commerce happened during what was known as the ‘dot com era’ that occurred between 1988 and 2000 where purchases and sales happened over the internet with concepts such as e-shopping carts and transfer of funds via an electronic medium. Although many such companies went out of business after the dot com crash in 2001 many otherwise traditional enterprises took on e-commerce as a way of further improving and expanding their businesses. Successful online retailers include Hewlett Packard computers, Dell, Amazon and a few others and the things that are most commonly traded online are consumer electronics including computers because as far as electronic goods are concerned there is a wider variety available on the web. The earlier barriers that deterred many from taking up e-commerce have been lowered and now it is easier for small proprietors and business concerns to begin trading via the internet. Many sellers like Dell computers also prefer this method as it eliminates the unnecessary cost and inconvenience of having a middle man.
Filed under: E-Commerce
